Tony Burton

Tony Burton's books include “Lake Chapala: A Postcard History” (2022), “Foreign Footprints in Ajijic” (2022), “If Walls Could Talk: Chapala’s historic buildings and their former occupants” (2020), (available in translation as “Si Las Paredes Hablaran"), "Mexican Kaleidoscope” (2016), and “Lake Chapala Through the Ages” (2008). Amazon Author Page                                          Facebook Page

Actress Selena Royle wrote about Ajijic and Chapala in the 1960s

 1960s  No Responses »
Dec 182025
 

American actress Selena Royle lived in Guadalajara for almost thirty years, beginning in the mid-1950s. She later penned a very popular book about the city which included some interesting observations about Ajijic and Chapala.

Born in New York City on 6 November 1904, Royle worked on stage, radio and in more than thirty films from the 1920s to the 1950s. Among her many roles was playing the title character’s mother opposite Ingrid Bergman, the star of Joan of Arc (1948).

Selena Royle cover

In the early 1950s, after her name was included on a list of suspected communist sympathizers, she won a lawsuit against the publishers. But her career, like that of so many others in similar circumstances at the time, was abruptly ended. Her last film was Murder Is My Beat (1955).

Royle had married actor George Renavent, her second husband, in 1948. Renavent, born in France in 1894, had roles in Queen Christina (1933), Sullivan’s Travels (1941) and Jezebel (1938).

After moving with her husband to Guadalajara in 1951, their home in colonia Seattle became an “artistic salon” for aspiring composers, writers and painters. Renavent, a keen amateur artist, showed some of his Mexican works in 1958 at the  Instituto Cultural Mexicano-Norteamericano in a two-person show with Charles Turver.

Royle and her husband ran acting classes at the Instituto Cultural Mexicano-Norteamericano in Guadalajara in 1960. She immersed herself in numerous charitable activities in benefit of the local community, and continued these endeavors long after her husband’s death in the city in 1969.

In 1974, Royle co-founded the Guadalajara Theater Guild to present English-language plays in the city. The other co-founders, all professional actors, were Gail Benedict, Irene Martin and Robert Herzbach. The group’s first show, which opened in October that year at the Experimental Theater (at the entrance to Parque Agua Azul) was Arthur Miller’s The Price. In 1976, Royle directed the group’s production of Tennessee Williams’ The Night of the Iguana. In 1982, Royle gave a talk at the ex-convento del Carmen in Guadalajara as part of a showing of silent films.

In addition to Guadalajara as I know it, live it, love it (originally self-published in 1966), Royle wrote three cookery books: Pheasants for Peasants (co written with Renavent in 1956); White Tie, Black Tie or No Tie (date unknown); and A Gringa’s Guide to Mexican Cooking (Litografica Turmex SA, 1973). Royle was the Guadalajara correspondent for the Mexico City News and a columnist for the Colony (now Guadalajara) Reporter.

Selena Royle donated her papers and documents (1909-1970) to the American Heritage Center at the University of Wyoming in Laramie.

What did Selena Royle write about Lake Chapala?

Selena Royle chapter 8 heading

Selena Royle, chapter 8 title

Chapter 8 of Guadalajara as I know it…, live it…, love it…. (1966) is titled “Down to the Lake.” Royle begins by describing, in her usual down-to-earth chatty style, some of the better options for hotels, activities, meals and trips, including to the islands. She notes the contributions made by Neill James and Helen Kirtland and others to life in Ajijic, and also mentions the white serapes of Jocotepec. This is pretty standard fare for any guidebook.

But the final two pages of the chapter, subtitled “Driving to Chapala” are more personal, and, for our purposes, more interesting:

It’s a must! The trip to Chapala. By car you can make it in less than an hour, but I wouldn’t advise it. The roads are fine. It’s not that. But there are places where you will want to pull up by the side of the road and just enjoy the view.

We motored down the other day, and it was as though we were passing through a gallery of paintings…. The rains had dyed the grass a bright green, but in the distance the mountains were a smear of colors: dull purples, soft dark browns, greys and taupes relieved here and there with a streak of stark black or a gleam of light where the sun had sneaked its way through mountain crevices. And the sky—well, better writers than I have tried to describe the Mexican sky and failed….

You will get your first glimpse of the seventy mile long lake as you top the last high hill. Not long ago it looked from the distance like a pink lake, reminiscent of the Red Sea, tinted by millions of water hyacinths….

Chapala, itself, is small: a combination residential and resort type village such as will be found beside lakes in all parts of the world. Aside from a few restaurants and gift shops, grocery stores and a gas station, it has no commercial center. The months of July and August see the mass migration from Guadalajara to the lake area but the rest of the year the city sends hundreds of weekenders to the popu1ar “Chapala Riviera.”

The children enjoy swimming, racing their bikes along the walk beside the lake front, riding the burros and horses, picnicking under the trees, doing all the things children do on vacations. Meanwhile, the athletic young folk take to water skis, swim in the yacht club pool, race their boats up and down the lake, while the oldsters swing a mean golf club at the local course, or take on a visiting golfer from Chula Vista down the road to Ajijic.

The local fishermen set forth at dawn to cast their nets and haul in the Chapala white fish. A stupid fish, say the sports fishermen, for it will not rise to bait but must be netted. A delicious fish say the gourmets, for it is tender, white and firm and as sweet as any you have ever eaten….

The yacht Club is new. The Country Club also is new, having moved from its old quarters. Again I must yearn for the past for while not a beauty certainly and surely not the most comfortable the original club was located in an old dowager of a building. Built originally as a railroad station it never acquired the rails and trains to go with it. But it is part of the past. Please preserve it, Chapala!

Royle died in Zapopan, Jalisco, on 24 April 1983 (that is the date given on her death registration). She was mistaken about the railroad, which certainly had rails and trains, and was fully operational from its inauguration in 1920 to its unfortunate demise six years later. However, Royle’s cry for the stately station building to be preserved for posterity was realized. It has been restored and repurposed as the González Gallo Cultural Center.

The story of this iconic building and its importance as part of Chapala’s cultural heritage, is told in chapter 42 of If Walls Could Talk: Chapala’s Historic Buildings and Their Former Occupants (translated into Spanish as Si las paredes hablaran: Edificios históricos de Chapala y sus antiguos ocupantes.)

Lake Chapala Artists & Authors is reader-supported. Purchases made via links on our site may, at no cost to you, earn us an affiliate commission. Learn more.
Several chapters of Foreign Footprints in Ajijic: Decades of Change in a Mexican Village offer more details about the history of the artistic community in Ajijic.

Sources

  • Selena Royle. 1966. Guadalajara as I know it, live it, love it. Self-published.
  • El Informador: 22 April 1958, 7; 8 May 1958; 27 Dec 1959, 16; 8 May 1960, 23; 1 Sep 1974.
  • Burt Folkart. 1983, “Selena Royle, 78, Mother in Many Movies: Career Faded After She Refused to Testify During McCarthy Era.” Los Angeles Times: 6 May 1983, B23.

Comments, corrections and additional material are welcome, whether via comments or email.

Multifaceted artist Jorge Enciso painted Chapala and co-designed Mexico’s coat-of-arms

 1920s and earlier  2 Responses »
Dec 112025
 

Born in Guadalajara on 3 January 1879, Jorge Enciso became a designer, painter, muralist and museologist.

Enciso’s first formal art studies were at the studio of master Brazilian-Mexican painter Félix Bernardelli, who introduced him to impressionism. The illustrious group studying with or working alongside Bernadelli included Gerardo Murillo (better known as Dr. Atl), Luis de la Torre, Rafael Ponce de León and José María Lupercio, who became one of Mexico’s best-known photographers. With Bernadelli’s encouragement, Enciso also later traveled and studied in Europe.

These creative individuals were members of Ateneo Jalisciense, an artistic-scientific society founded in July 1903 which organized concerts, presentations, lectures, discussions and exhibitions, including several in which Enciso participated. Other distinguished members of Ateneo Jalisciense included Tomás V. Gómez, Alberto Santoscoy, Salvador Villaseñor, Luis Pérez Verdía, Enrique Meyer (father of violinist Tula Meyer, who lived for many years in Ajijic) and violinist Alfredo Levy, who was Chapala’s mayor (presidente municipal) in 1919.

In 1906, Enciso contributed with other artists and writers to a short-lived magazine called Savia Moderna. The cover of the first issue featured a Diego Rivera drawing of an indigenous man, shown in profile. It linked to a poem inside (by Emilio Valenzuela) including the words: “He fixes his gaze on the sun and moves forward, his bare feet on rocks and thorns. What noble yearning is hidden in his eyes, where the sun’s rays can barely penetrate?”

The May 1906 issue of Savia Moderna included a painting by Enciso of Lake Chapala. (If you have a photograph of this or any other Lake Chapala painting by Jorge Enciso, please get in touch!)

Jorge Enciso. Manzanillo. Credit: Museo CJV.

Jorge Enciso. Undated. Manzanillo. Credit: Museo CJV (Claudio Jiménez Vizcarra).

In 1907, Enciso moved to Mexico City to continue his studies at the National School of Fine Arts of San Carlos. In a major exhibition that year, ‘Exposición de Savia Moderna’ at the Palacio de Bellas Artes in Mexico City, one of Enciso’s Lake Chapala paintings—described as a picture of the lake, with its clear water colored in oranges and violets—was selected for display.

Like most of his fellow students from Guadalajara, Enciso pushed the envelope of what was considered ‘conventional art’ at that time, and recognized the need for a nationalist approach which went well beyond merely imitating what was happening in Europe or elsewhere. Enciso later became an instructor at the National School of Fine Arts.

Enciso exhibited paintings in Guadalajara in an Industrial, Artistic, and Commercial Exhibition (1908) and in the Centennial Exhibition (1910), where his work, titled “Anáhuac” was a life-size portrait of an indigenous individual. He also participated in various shows organized by the Jalisco Athenaeum.

Jorge Enciso. 1910. Paisaje con figuras (Landscape with figures). Credit: Instituto Cultural Cabañas exhibit, 2017.

Jorge Enciso. 1910. Paisaje con figuras (Landscape with figures). Credit: Instituto Cultural Cabañas exhibit, 2017.

In Mexico City, when commissioned to paint murals on the walls of two now-demolished schools, Enciso adopted a style that clearly evoked pre-Hispanic themes.

His good friend José Juan Tablada made sure that Enciso’s landscape painting was appreciated, writing in 1927 that:

his work, though small in quantity, deserves recognition. He was the first of our painters to be moved by the twilight and nocturnal aspects of Mexican nature. He painted landscapes of Lake Chapala and of villages with the typical flora and architecture of our country, using neutral, yet elegant, color harmonies. Due to his palette of subdued, muted colors, Enciso could be called a Whistlerian painter.”

Enciso abandoned painting in 1915 to dedicate himself to the preservation of Mexico’s pre-Hispanic and colonial artefacts and monuments. After being appointed to a federal position as General Inspector of Artistic Monuments in 1916, Enciso co-founded, with Ixca Farias,  the Regional Museum in Guadalajara in 1918, and helped found Mexico’s National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH) in 1939, later serving for a time as its director.

Jorge Enciso - cover

Enciso’s most ‘read’ work is undoubtedly his 1947 book titled Sellos del Antiguo Mexico, reprinted six years later in the U.S. by Dover Publications as Design Motifs in Mexico. All the designs are from ancient ‘sellos,’ clay handstamps used to decorate pottery and other objects. As claimed on its back cover, the book has stamps representing “plumed serpents, calendrical elements, wind gods, insects, toads, lizards, birds, real and mythological animals, flowers, demons, the human head and figure, and hundreds of abstract ornamental designs derived from carved seals of the Aztec, Maya, Totonac, Zapotec, Olmec, Toltec, and other early Mexican cultures.” The designs, offered ‘royalty free’ with virtually no restrictions on their use, have been widely used by generations of graphic designers worldwide.

Enciso’s designs also have an indirect connection to Lake Chapala. In 1991 several of the designs were chosen by accomplished watercolor painter and poet Aileen Olsen Melby, then a Chapala resident, to illustrate her poetry collection Song for Mexico.

Enciso’s most ‘seen’ work must be Mexico’s coat-of-arms. In 1916, during the presidency of Venustiano Carranza, Jorge Enciso and Antonio Gómez collaborated on a redesign of Mexico’s coat-of-arms, which, however, did not replace the previous version until 1932. It was redrawn with minor changes in 1968.

Not surprisingly, when the state of Jalisco decided that 1964 would be a year devoted to the Plastic Arts, Enciso was honored with an award for his painting career, as were several other artists with Lake Chapala connections, including José Othón de Aguinaga, Guillermo Chávez Vega, José María Servin and José Guadalupe Zuno.

Jorge Enciso died in Mexico City in 1969.

Lake Chapala Artists & Authors is reader-supported. Purchases made via links on our site may, at no cost to you, earn us an affiliate commission.
Several chapters of Foreign Footprints in Ajijic: Decades of Change in a Mexican Village offer more details about the history of the artistic community in Ajijic.

Sources

  • José Juan Tablada. 1927. La Historia del arte en México. Editora Águilas, pp. 244-245.
  • El Tiempo, 23 June 1907, 9.
  • Savia moderna: May 1906.
  • Ixca Farías. 1943. Casos y cosas de mis tiempos. Guadalajara: Ediciones del Colegio Internacional.

Comments, corrections and additional material are welcome, whether via comments or email.

John Wadleigh and his Ajijic-inspired novel “The Bitter Passion”

 1950s  No Responses »
Dec 042025
 

I might never have stumbled across John Wadleigh’s novel The Bitter Passion (1959), were it not for a review by Tom Ray, who said that he had been told by a friend in Mexico: “that some of the Norte-Americano expatriates had been asked to leave the Lake Chapala area. This sensitive, well-written novel deals with such a colony (perhaps with the one mentioned), and the inevitable tragedy derived from the behavior of rootless people who have drunk too much and have too little to do.”

Wadleigh-Cover

There was something about this review which suggested that Ray had inside information about the book. So, curiosity piqued, I looked into the author and read the novel for myself.

Author and artist John Warren Wadleigh was born on 14 December 1927 in New York City. After serving in the U.S. military from 1945 to 1951, he graduated from Columbia University, and began writing while making money at a number of different jobs, including as an editorial assistant at The New Yorker.

Wadleigh married Judith Ferree (1929-1994) on 11 April 1954 at Westport, Connecticut, and published his first novel The Bitter Passion in 1959. The back cover blurb explains that the author, married with two children, had worked—at one time or other—as a station engineer, radio operator, veterinarian’s assistant, factory worker, soldier, publicity writer, editorial assistant and telephone linesman. After living for six years in Europe and Mexico, he had returned to live in New York City.

Wadleigh’s debut novel—“a first novel of deceptive simplicity”—is the “tragic story of an emotional explosion in the primitive Mexican fishing village of Oxahuitcoatl.” The basis for the fictional village of Oxahuitcoatl was Ajijic; many elements in the novel are a near-perfect match for the lakeside village, where Wadleigh must had lived long enough at some point to fathom out the shifting social undercurrents stirred by an ever-increasing number of American residents.

Infuriatingly, I can’t find any direct corroborating evidence to confirm that Wadleigh did actually live in Ajijic or anything about the timing and circumstances of his visit or visits to Mexico.

Credit: St. Louis Post-Dispatch: 19 April 1959, p35.

Credit: St. Louis Post-Dispatch: 19 April 1959, p35.

A future post will look more closely at the novel. But shortly after its publication, Wadleigh moved to Santa Fe, New Mexico. While his reasons are unclear, perhaps he was yearning to distance himself from the bright lights and telephones of the big city for a lifestyle more akin to what he’d experienced in Ajijic.

In Santa Fe, Wadleigh enjoyed painting and sculpting and won an honorable mention for sculpture at the 1965 Fiesta Biennial Exhibition at the Museum of New Mexico. In the early 1960s, Wadleigh joined with Oliver LaFarge and Spud Johnson to found the (original) Pasatiempo arts magazine in Santa Fe, to which he contributed as an art critic.

Following the success of his first novel, Wadleigh published another dozen novels, using the pseudonym Oliver Lange. They included the widely acclaimed Vandenberg (1971)—where the eponymous hero and his friends, living in the New Mexico wilderness, resist a Soviet invasion of the US—Red Snow ((978), Next of Kin (1980), Land of the Long Shadow (1981), Pas de Deux (1982), The Devil at Home (1986) and Making It (1989).

In the 1980s, Wadleigh moved to Friday Harbor, Washington, and then to Bandon, Oregon, where he died on 24 September 2013 at the age of 85.

Lake Chapala Artists & Authors is reader-supported. Purchases made via links on our site may, at no cost to you, earn us an affiliate commission. Learn more.
Several chapters of Foreign Footprints in Ajijic: Decades of Change in a Mexican Village offer more details about the history of the artistic community in Ajijic.

Sources

  • Tom Ray. 1959. “The Bitter Passion” (review). San Francisco Chronicle, 31 May 1959, 68.
  • Oliver Lange (John W Wadsley). 1971. Vandenberg. Stein & Day.
  • John W Wadleigh. 1959. The Bitter Passion. E.P. Dutton.
  • Albuquerque Journal: 2 Jul 1965, 15.
  • The Atlanta Journal: 7 Jun 1959, 83.
  • New York Times: 6 July 1959, 22.
  • Robert Nott. 2013. “John Wadleigh, 1927–2013: Artist, writer, critic was a ‘big character’.” Santa Fe New Mexican. 2 Oct 2013.

Comments, corrections and additional material are welcome, whether via comments or email.

Wishful thinking #8: Old Photo of Ajijic? Not exactly . . .

 1920s and earlier  No Responses »
Nov 272025
 

This image, which periodically resurfaces on social media, is sometimes mistakenly claimed to be an old photograph of Ajijic.

Old Photo of Ajijic? (No! -Jamay)

Q. Old photograph of Ajijic? Answer: No!

In fact, the photograph is a cropped section of a photo of Jamay, Jalisco, taken by Dwight Rodgers Furness in about 1907. Furness was the son of the founder of the Hotel Ribera Castellanos, a lakeside resort with many literary connections, located close to Jamay.

Furness became a significant figure in photographic history when he was asked to head the pioneering USA Aerial Photography School that George Eastman established as a joint venture between the United States Army Signal Corps and the Eastman Kodak Company in Rochester, New York, in 1918. 

Here is a color-tinted version of Furness’ original photo of Jamay; this version was published by Alba y Fernández of Guadalajara in an extensive series of similar, colorized postcard images which proved to be very popular among collectors and tourists.

Dwight Furness. ca 1907. Jamay. (Published by Alba y Fernández, Guadalajara)

Dwight Rodgers Furness. c. 1907. Jamay. (Published by Alba y Fernández, Guadalajara). Fig 6.9 of Lake Chapala: a postcard history.

Surprisingly little is known about the publishing firm of Alba y Fernández, beyond two street addresses (calle Alhondiga 272, used in advertisements from 1909 to 1910, and calle San Diego 267, used from 1910 to 1911) and the post box address (Apartado 213, Guadalajara) used on the correspondence side of their cards. If you know more about this company, please get in touch!

Lake Chapala Artists & Authors is reader-supported. Purchases made via links on our site may, at no cost to you, earn us an affiliate commission. Learn more.

My 2022 book Lake Chapala: A Postcard History uses reproductions of more than 150 vintage postcards to tell the incredible story of how Lake Chapala became an international tourist and retirement center. See Hotel Ribera Castellanos and Lake Chapala Agricultural and Improvement Company for a multi-page account of the historic hotel.

Comments, corrections and additional material are welcome, whether via the comments feature or email.

Travel journalist Stan Delaplane spent the summer of 1970 in Ajijic

 1950s  2 Responses »
Nov 202025
 

Legendary travel journalist Stanton (Stan) Delaplane (1907-1988) and his family spent the summer of 1970 in Ajijic.

Delaplane was a prolific San Francisco journalist who won a Pulitzer prize in 1942 for his reporting about the proposed ‘State of Jefferson’ (for break-away residents of northern California and southern Oregon) and two National Headliner Awards awards before starting a travel writing career.

Map of driving route, Morelia to Guadalajara. Stan Delaplane. 1953.

Driving route, Morelia to Guadalajara. Stan Delaplane. 1953. Click to enlarge.

His unique style was short staccato sentences. He used few or no adjectives. And wrote invariably with a touch of good humor. Always entertaining. Sometimes in sentence fragments. Admirers lauded his writing as Hemingwayesque. Delaplane claimed it was to help San Francisco Municipal Railway riders who read the paper while jostling on crowded trains.

Delaplane, born in Chicago, Illinois, on 12 October 1907, completed his high school years in California and worked for the San Francisco Chronicle for 53 years, after beginning his career at Apéritif Magazine. During the second world war, he served as a war correspondent in the Pacific. His lasting claim to fame, for many, is for having convinced the owner of the Buena Vista Cafe in San Francisco to start serving Irish coffee (then virtually unknown in the U.S.) at his bar in 1952.

The following year, he turned his talents to travel writing. One of his first syndicated ‘Postcard’ columns was about driving from Morelia to Guadalajara along Highway 15, via Zamora, Jiquilpan, Tizapán el Alto, San Pedro [Tesistán] and El Molino. Conspicuous by its absence is the large town of Jocotepec, at the western end of Lake Chapala, which lies a couple of hundred meters off Highway 15!

In the same ‘postcard,’ Delaplane told readers that a house could be rented in Ajijic for US$58 a month, and this included “three servants, all your food, tequila and a private launch with crew on Lake Chapala.”

In “Postcard from Ajijic: An Ear to the Keyhole” (1970), Delaplane wrote that, “Ajijic was an Indian fishing village on Lake Chapala. Some years ago it was discovered by artists and writers – the cost of living was terribly low. Even now it’s not bad. I did a piece on it then and one of the people said reproachfully: ‘I hope you don’t do that again. It was very unfair.’ I said, ‘I don’t remember EVER writing about Ajijic. I can’t even remember when I was here.’” (If Delaplane really did write an earlier piece about Ajijic, I have yet to find it.)

The next day, in an entirely different column in a different paper, Delaplane summarized life at Lake Chapala:
“Ten thousand Americans have moved here where it’s everlasting spring, 5,000 feet up in central Mexico. They swear it’s the pleasantest place, and the best climate in all the world.
They’re mostly retired people-you can’t work in Mexico until you have lived here five years. There are a lot of artists and writers drawn by the low cost of living. (Writing is not considered work. How about that?)
I’ve had several estimates on what it costs: $600 a month covers a modest rented house; a daily maid; food and a few drinks; a party now and then, and a membership in the golf club. Artists and writers do it cheaper. Hippie types? Mexico is conservative. They aren’t very welcome.
After agreeing it’s the best climate, the argument is WHERE life is best: The village of Ajijic (pop. 3,500) where it all began. Chapala (pop. 7,000) is a pleasant village with a country club residential area five miles out. Jocotepec (pop. 8,000) is an Indian fishing village admired by the art people.”

Everett Herald, 1 Aug 1970. Stan Delaplane.

Everett Herald, 1 Aug 1970. Stan Delaplane.

Returning to Lake Chapala four years later, Delaplane recognized that local life was changing:

We drove over to Lake Chapala the other day. We had a house there four years ago. They [his two children] have fond memories of maids and houseboys and horses they rode . . . . Every Indian village has put in a small supermarket . . . .  As this new American money comes in, it changes the land. The cowboy leaves his horse and puts on a waiter’s uniform at the hotel. Village boys caddy on the golf course. The older girls get jobs as maids. More help is needed at the supermarket. Boutiques and curio stores and sandal shops and candle shops spring up.”

In his book Stan Delaplane’s Mexico (1976), Delaplane includes a section titled “Dust on my Knuckles” (echoing the Neill James’ book Dust on my Heart), which opens: “Chapala — The Mexican day dies grandly in the central highlands. Rain clouds tower in the sky. The sun spouts blood and fire and Spanish gold. There’s faraway thunder.”

Delaplane’s final sunset was in San Francisco on 18 April 1988.

Lake Chapala Artists & Authors is reader-supported. Purchases made via links on our site may, at no cost to you, earn us an affiliate commission. Learn more.

Sources

  • San Francisco Chronicle: 26 Jan 1953, 17; 23 Aug 1974, 37.
  • Stan Delaplane. 1970. “Postcard from Ajijic: An Ear to the Keyhole.” Everett Herald: 1 Aug 1970.
  • Stan Delaplane. 1970. “Best in the World.” Tulsa Daily World, 2 August 1970.
  • Stanton Delaplane and Stuart Nixon. 1976. Stan Delaplane’s Mexico. San Francisco: Chronicle Books.

Comments, corrections and additional material are welcome, whether via comments or email.

10 proven or suspected Luis Barragan works in Chapala

 1930s, 1940s  No Responses »
Nov 132025
 

From the 1930s onwards, several architects, most of them graduates of the Guadalajara engineering school, undertook modernist projects in Chapala. They included Pedro Castellanos Lambley, Juan Palomar y Arias and Ignacio Díaz Morales. But the one who became by far the most famous was Luis Barragán.

Who was Luis Barragán?

Often described as the most influential Mexican architect of the twentieth century, Luis Barragán Morfín (1902–1988) was raised in Guadalajara and graduated as an engineer from the city’s Escuela Libre de Ingenieros in 1923. During an extensive trip to Europe and Morocco, Barragán heard lectures by Le Corbusier and became familiar with the ideas and work of Ferdinand Bac. Inspired by their modernist approach, he returned to Guadalajara in 1926, where he initially worked alongside his brother—Juan José (who had worked with Birger Winsnes as an engineer building the La Capilla-Chapala railroad line and who later developed a close business association with Castellanos Lambley)—before establishing his own architectural practice.

In 1936, after about a decade of projects in Guadalajara and Chapala, Luis Barragán moved to Mexico City, where he designed and developed the residential area of Jardines del Pedregal. His house and studio, completed in 1948, are now a UNESCO World Heritage site. Barragán was also responsible, with partners, for Torres de Satélite (1957) and the residential areas of Las Arboledas and Lomas Verdes, all in the proximity of Ciudad Satélite in the state of México.

In his seventies, Barragán was granted a solo exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City (1976) and won the prestigious Pritzker Architecture Prize (1980), the only Mexican ever to do so.

Following his death in 1988, Barragán’s ashes were interred in the Rotunda de los Jaliscienses Ilustres in Guadalajara. In a macabre twist, some of his ashes were later turned into a diamond ring by American conceptual artist Jill Magid, whose documentary, The Proposal, details her bizarre attempt to exchange the ring for the Barragán archives, currently in private hands in Switzerland, and repatriate them to Mexico.

Here is a list of proven or suspected Barragán works in Chapala, as well as some Barragán proposals that were never acted upon:

The Bynner House, Chapala, 2016. Photo: Tony Burton.

Casa Barragán (aka the Bynner house), Chapala, 2016. Photo: Tony Burton.

1. Avenida Madero #411 (Casa Barragán, aka the Witter Bynner house)

A few buildings north of the main church, and on the same side of Avenida Madero, Casa Barragán had belonged to the Barragán family, who owned a hacienda in the hills on the south side of the lake, since the end of the nineteenth century. The family used their Chapala house as a staging point on trips to and from Guadalajara. In 1931-32, Luis Barragán, ably assisted by colleague Juan Palomar y Arias, transformed the original residence here into an interesting two-story modernist home. Eight years later, Casa Barragán was bought as a vacation home by the American poet Witter Bynner. Though the house has been remodeled several times since, including by Bynner—who installed large windows in his study and added a rooftop mirador to get a view of the lake—it retains several distinctive Barragán design elements.

2. Avenida Madero #232

Definitive attribution of this building to Luis Barragán is, as yet, unproven. At the end of the nineteenth century, this property was the site of a rustic inn called Mesón de la Purisima. In April 1932, when Luis Barragán and his siblings were settling their father’s estate, five of the six siblings—engineers Juan José and Luis, lawyer Daniel, and their two sisters, Luz and Paz—sold Mesón de la Purísima to their brother, Alfonso. Three years later, in October 1935, when Alfonso sold it to Carlota Bohnstedt de Monteverde, the new deed stated that the original building had been torn down and replaced by a new house. It seems fairly likely, in my opinion, that this would have been designed by Luis Barragán, perhaps assisted by his brother Juan José. This property, remodeled more than once since the 1930s, became the Plaza Hotel Chapala in 2019.

Sketch by Luis Barragán for Casa Newton. (Federica Zanco: "Luis Barragán: la revolución callada," p 55.)

Sketch by Luis Barragán for Casa Newton. (Federica Zanco: “Luis Barragán: la revolución callada,” p 55)

3. Avenida Hidalgo #250 (Villa Niza, later known as Casa Newton)

This elegant residence, dating from 1919, was originally designed by Guillermo de Alba for Andrés Somellera, a Guadalajara businessman. Its strong geometric design boasts only minimal exterior ornamentation. The ideas proposed in 1934 by Luis Barragán (sketch above) were never carried out.

4. Kiosk, Central Plaza

In that same year, 1934, Barragán designed a new kiosk (below) for the main plaza in Chapala, then located about a block south of the current central plaza. Though I’ve never seen any supporting documentary evidence (beyond a brief mention in Barragan: The Complete Works), the kiosk was apparently constructed and installed. The original plaza was relocated during the extensive remodeling of the town center at the end of the 1940s. The kiosk was not installed in the new plaza, and its current whereabouts, if it survived, are unknown.

Barragan. 1934. Design for Chapala kiosko. (Credit: Raúl Rispa, et al, 2003)

Barragan. 1934. Design for Chapala kiosk. (Credit: Raúl Rispa, et al, 2003)

5. Paseo Ramón Corona #10

Guadalajara architect Juan Palomar Verea (grandson of Juan Palomar y Arias, who worked closely with Luis Barragán on the transformation of Casa Barragán) has identified this building (sandwiched between two properties remodeled by Pedro Castellanos Lambley in the 1930s) as a project undertaken by Barragán in about 1934 for Gustavo R Cristo, a former mayor of Guadalajara. Numerous renovations since mean that few signs, if any, of Barragán’s input remain today.

6. Paseo Ramón Corona #14 (Villa Robles León)

Villa Robles León, which still stands, was an existing older building remodeled in a joint project in the 1930s by Luis Barragán and Ignacio Díaz Morales into a modernist residence, readily identifiable by its highly distinctive rounded sides. It was the vacation home (looking directly onto the beach at the time) of Emiliano Robles León (1888–1961), a notable lawyer, notary and academic in Guadalajara. Barragán made extensive changes and added a third story to create the equivalent of a master bedroom (with its own bathroom) on the top level. Unlike most homes in Chapala, the arched entrance way to the property is positioned off-center at one extremity of its southern boundary wall, a wall made of long, thin bricks arranged as a series of “V”s forming a geometric wave design. Several aspects of Barragán’s redesign were apparently inspired by a boat.

Casa de las Cuentas, 1941. (Credit: Goldsmith, 1941)

Casa de las Cuentas, 1941. (Credit: Goldsmith, 1941)

7. Calle Zaragoza #307 (Casa de las Cuentas, aka the D. H. Lawrence house)

Casa de las Cuentas is where D. H. Lawrence resided for a few weeks in 1923 while writing the initial draft of The Plumed Serpent. This originally nineteenth century residence was remodeled by Barragán in about 1940, when it was owned by Gustavo R. Cristo. Barragán’s work here was featured the following year in House and Garden. His striking “halfmoon entrance gateway, with heavy wooden grill work painted red outside and French blue inside” added an Oriental touch, characteristic of much of his work of this period. He also designed a spectacular rounded bay window for the dining room, with built-in steel shelves for a collection of hand-blown glass. The house was since been extensively remodeled more than once, gathering links to several other famous writers and artists along the way. Today, it is the Hotel Villa QQ.

8. Avenida Hidalgo #251 (Jardín del Mago)

Almost opposite Villa Niza is Jardín del Mago, a small residence nestled in a terraced garden. A stone dog guards the gate of this interesting property. The unpretentious house and garden, thought to date from about 1940, has a close link to Luis Barragán: it was the Chapala vacation home of his sister Luz and her husband, Alfredo Vázquez Tello, an architect turned antiquities dealer based in Guadalajara. Architect Juan Palomar Verea believes that Luis Barragán personally oversaw the creation of this garden with its extensive terraces and plantings covering around 5000 square meters of the lower slopes of Cerro San Miguel, and it is possible that Barragán also had some input into the simple, functionalist, multilevel residence. Palomar considers this is “one of the most important Mexican gardens of all time,” and represents a key link in style and date between the gardens of Ferdinand Bac (under whom Barragán studied in Europe in 1922) and Barragán’s own internationally acclaimed Jardines del Pedregal de San Ángel (1948) in Mexico City. If Palomar is correct, the Jardin del Mago shows how Barragán, even early in his career, had already begun to develop the individual style that would later lead to world fame.

9. Avenida Hidalgo #246 (Villa Adriana)

Villa Adriana, designed by Pedro Castellanos Lambley, was completed by Luis Barragán in about 1947 for its then owners: Jesús González Gallo (Jalisco state governor, 1947–1953) and his wife, Paz Gortázar (sister of María Luisa Gortázar, the wife of Luis’s brother Alfonso). This magnificent building, created by two of the region’s most famous architects, has been impeccably maintained to this day.

10. Subdivision of a lot on Calle Guerrero (1963)

Along with #1, #3 and #7, this is one of four Barragán projects in Chapala included on the List of Works published by The Barragán Foundation, based in Switzerland. The Curator of the Foundation, Martin Josephy, kindly responded to my email query about this entry to explain that it comprised “a small number of variants for the subdivision of a plot of ca. 1500 square meters along Calle Guerrero.” While its precise location remains to be determined, there is no evidence that this project was ever carried out.

Most existing listings of the ‘complete works’ of Luis Barragán, Mexico’s greatest twentieth century architect, clearly need to be revised to reflect the rightful place of Chapala in the history of Mexican architecture!

Note: Despite its name, the location of the hotel-restaurant named “Casa Barragán,” (Paseo Ramón Corona #13, Chapala) has no known connection to the architect. This property was originally the site of the distinctive two-story Villa Carmen, built by Roberto de la Mora in the final decade of the nineteenth century; its later names included Villa Margarita and Villa Sergio. The original building was demolished prior to the 1950s.

Lake Chapala Artists & Authors is reader-supported. Purchases made via links on our site may, at no cost to you, earn us an affiliate commission. Learn more.

Six chapters of If Walls Could Talk: Chapala’s Historic Buildings and Their Former Occupants —translated into Spanish as Si las paredes hablaran: Edificios históricos de Chapala y sus antiguos ocupantes— relate to residences designed or modified by Luis Barragán. They include more detailed accounts of Casa Barragán (the Witter Bynner house), Villa Adriana, Villa Niza (Casa Newton), Jardín del Mago, Villa Robles León and Casa de las Cuentas (D.H. Lawrence house).

Sources

  • Anon. 1935. “Recent Work of a Mexican Architect- Luis Barragán.” Architectural Record (New York), January, 1935, 33-46.
  • Jose Alvarez Checa, Luis Barragan, Manuel Ramos Guerra. 1991. Obra construida. Luis Barragán Morfín. 1902-1988. Sevilla, Spain: Junta de Andalucía. Consejeria de Obras Publicas y Transportes.
  • Goldsmith, Margaret O. 1941. “Week-end house in Mexico.” House and Garden, vol 79 (May 1941), 44-45.
  • Rispa, Raúl and Antonio Toca. 2003. Barragan: The Complete Works. Princeton Architectural Press.
  • Palomar Verea, Juan. 2019. “Chapala: primera de las cuatro casas que Luis Barragán hizo para sí mismo.” El Informador, 10 July 2019.
  • Zanco, Federica. 2014. Luis Barragán: la revolución callada. SKIRA.

Comments, corrections and additional material are welcome, whether via comments or email.

Emil Zubryn visited Lake Chapala in 1955 during its worst ever drought

 1950s  2 Responses »
Nov 062025
 

Emil Zubryn was born on 11 July 1909 in Brooklyn, New York, to Nicholas Zubryn (30) and his wife Mary (29), newly arrived immigrants from Austria. His father worked as a building maintenance employee of the New York Telephone Company. Emil’s parents later lived for 12 years in Phoenix, Arizona, before spending their final years in Tulsa, Oklahoma, where Mary died in 1958 and Nicholas the following year.

Emil Zubryn graduated from the Brooklyn Evening High School for Boys in June 1929. Even before leaving school he had revealed a glimpse of his precocious writing talent and signaled his intent to write for a living, as is evident in a short love poem, titled “The Poet to His Love,” he wrote for The Wichita Eagle:

My sun, my moon, my stars, my all,
My light of love divine!
I would that I might sing thy praise-
At fifty cents a line!

In his final year at High School, Zubryn wrote “The Enterprising Author” for Writer’s Digest, and he never looked back. Zubryn began his journalistic career in New York before enlisting in 1942 in the U.S. military. The following year he was discharged (for disability) following a month in hospital for hypertensive cardiovascular disease.

The gentle swells of Lake Chapala reached the wall and rocks seen here. Now only the lake bottom is visible as far as the eye can see, and this is steadily getting drier and dustier. (Meccano Magazine, December 1956)

“The gentle swells of Lake Chapala reached the wall and rocks seen here. Now only the lake bottom is visible as far as the eye can see, and this is steadily getting drier and dustier.” (The Meccano Magazine, December 1956). Photo dates from 1955.

In the mid-1940s, Zubryn was named in The New York Times as the editor of The Free Lance Weekly, a new publication, “devoted to market news for writers, photographers, artists and cartoonists.” At about the same time, it was reported in the U.K. that he was collaborating with British writer Kenneth C. Betteridge to present English plays for American radio audiences.

For motives unknown, Zubryn relocated to central Mexico in the late 1940s or very early 1950s, from where he pursued his writing career as a freelancer based in the city of Cuernavaca. He reported on a wide variety of Mexico-related topics and sold stories and short articles to English-language publications in the U.S. and elsewhere.

Zubryn developed a knack for recognizing and following up on newsworthy topics, often anticipating trends that had not yet caught the eye of other mainstream journalists. For example, in the 1950s he wrote “Phony Spirits Dupe Tourists in Mexico,” which brought attention to the issue of illicitly distilled drinks in Mexico, and “Mexico Can Be a Gourmet’s Delight,” in which he wrote that, “In the past year or so the Mexican kitchen has attained its deserved status as a gourmet’s delight.” It would take several decades for that to become a mainstream viewpoint.

Illustrating his short piece, titled “A Shrinking Lake. Doom of an Inland Sea in Mexico,” published by UK-based The Meccano Magazine in December 1956, were two photographs (probably taken by Zubryn) which showed the wide expanse of former lakebed then exposed to the elements. Ironically, on this occasion, Zubryn was behind the times!

"Where the water of the lake came right up to the improvised boardwalk seen on the right in the picture, now there is a walk of hundreds of yards to reach it." (Meccano Magazine, December 1956)

“Where the water of the lake came right up to the improvised boardwalk seen on the right in the picture, now there is a walk of hundreds of yards to reach it.” (The Meccano Magazine, December 1956). Photo dates from 1955.

It is true that a year earlier (1955) the level of Lake Chapala had fallen to a record low by 4 June. But it had then risen an amazing 3.4 meters (11.2 feet) by late-November, more or less back to its twentieth century norm. While the lake fell about a meter during 1955-56 dry season, it rebounded after the 1956 summer rainy season to an even higher level than a year earlier. By December 1956, when Zubryn’s article was published, the lake was back to ‘normal’ and looked nothing like the photographs. Clearly, both photographs must date from the first half of 1955. Unfortunately, the time spent in writing the article, and its submission, acceptance, editing and revision, meant that the photographs were totally out of date before they were printed.

However, the photographs do have historical value, because it is difficult or impossible to precisely date many photographs of Lake Chapala’s worst-ever drought, which was several years in the making, as evidenced by engineer Herbert Johnson‘s handwritten comments in his daily weather log in the mid-1940s.

Zubryn’s article opens by describing the lake and its problems, which he attributes less to poor rainfall in the preceding period (which we now know was definitely one of the causes), and more to practices such as deforestation, agricultural decline (and failing crops as soil erosion occurred) and the intense pumping of wells, which reduced the levels of subterranean water. As Zubryn pointed out, “for eight years now, the lake level has been falling and falling, until now the beaches are two to three miles distant from the old lake shore line,” with the consequence that “with heavy dust clouds instead of cool lake breezes, the area is losing its appeal as a tourist haven.”

The author also mentions the abstraction of water from the River Lerma, upstream from Lake Chapala, to supply Mexico City, and the proliferation of dams and reservoirs in the Lerma-Chapala drainage basin. His conclusion was gloomy: despite efforts to reduce irrigation usage, and to reforest the basin, “the wanton destruction of forests, the thoughtless pumping of subsoil waters, and helpless official attitude are giving the death blow to Lake Chapala, and it appears that Mexico’s mightiest inland sea is doomed to be but a memory.” Fortunately, that did not happen.

Over his lengthy career, Zubryn reported succinctly, sensitively and accurately on all manner of topics, some more controversial than others, as revealed by a selection of his pieces from newspapers across North America: “Mexico, not U.S., ‘Invented” Cowboys” (1952); “Car Stealing Now Fine Art in Mexico; Even Police Vehicles No Longer Immune” (1965); The Quiet Life of the Mexico City Bellringer” (1965); “Mexicans Have Had Enough of U.S. Beatniks” (1967); “Mexico City Art School Shuns Orthodox Methods” (1969). His magazine articles north of the border included “He Stole $2,000,000 Before Breakfast” (Man’s Exploits, 1958); “Escape from the Isle of Death” (Rage for Men, 1957); “Ambush in the Sky” (Rage for Men, 1957); “The Border—Sin’s Frontier” (Adventure, 1957, under the pseudonym of Miguel Martínez); “Casas Chicas—The Love Nests of Mexico” (Adam, March 1962); “Who Invented Baseball?” (Cad, 1966); “The Reincarnated Warlock” (Fate, 1969); “Ritual Sacrifices for Mexican Subway?” (Fate, 1969). And one 1963 article he wrote—about the varied reactions in Mexico to the end of the U.S. program for braceros—even made it into the U.S. Congressional Record (House of Representatives).

Lake Chapala Artists & Authors is reader-supported. Purchases made via links on our site may, at no cost to you, earn us an affiliate commission. Learn more.

Sources

  • Emil Zubryn. 1926. “The Poet to His Love.” The Wichita Eagle, 17 Oct 1926, 18.
  • Emil Zubryn. 1928. “The Enterprising Author.” Writer’s Digest, March 1928, reprinted in John Locke (ed), 2007. Pulpwood Days: Volume 1: Editors You Want to Know. Off-Trail Publications.
  • Emil Zubryn. 1956. “A Shrinking Lake. Doom of an Inland Sea in Mexico.” The Meccano Magazine, December 1956, 604-605.
  • Emil Zubryn. 1957. “Phony Spirits Dupe Tourists in Mexico.” Houston Chronicle, 26 Sep 1957.
  • Emil Zubryn. 1963. ”Failure To Extend Program for Braceros Brings Divergent Reactions in Mexico.” Cotton Trade Journal. 7 June 1963.
  • Cheltenham Chronicle and Gloucestershire Graphic: 1 Jun 1946, 5.

Comments, corrections and additional material are welcome, whether via comments or email.

Heliodoro Gutierrez photographed Lake Chapala in 1908

 1920s and earlier  No Responses »
Oct 302025
 

Several Mexico City-based photographers visited Chapala over the Easter period in 1908 to ensure that President Porfirio Díaz’s visit that year was adequately covered in the national press.

One of the more noteworthy was Heliodoro J. Gutiérrez, who was sent there by El Tiempo Ilustrado, which included about twenty of his photographs in its 26 April 1908 issue. Many of the photographs show high society Mexico City families and their children enjoying their vacation at the lake. It was clearly far more important for Gutiérrez, who specialized in portraiture, to capture the faces and poses of some of Mexico’s high society, rather than portray Chapala’s scenic and architectural beauty.

El Tiempo Ilustrado summarized some of the events that had taken place that Easter in Chapala. They included moonlight strolls along the beach, a bullfight organized by Alberto Braniff in an improvised ring, a regatta, a formal dance at the Hotel Palmera (following which the younger people serenaded the chalets, hotels and private houses until daybreak) and excursions to lakeshore villages. Following one of those excursions, the magazine reported, the passenger vessel Carmelita had capsized while returning from Ajijic.

Aside: The Carmelita had been brought to the lake by the Crompton brothers in 1900. The small Wisconsin-built “electrical yacht” was named after President Díaz’s young wife (the sister-in-law of Lorenzo Elizaga, who owned El Manglar estate to the west of Chapala). The Cromptons sold it to the Lake Chapala Navigation Company in 1904. It capsized on 18 April 1908, throwing 14 passengers into the water. Other boats rushed to the rescue and no lives were lost. Two years later, the Carmelita repaid the favor when it rescued the passengers of the steamer Elisa after she lost power near Ocotlán.

The magazine told its readers that Heleodoro (sic) Gutiérrez—an ‘intelligent artist’—was offering more than thirty photographs—landscapes, groups and portraits—to the public, either as a set or individually, from his studio, The Chicago Photo Studio at 2a de Nuevo México #32. Alternatively, readers could make arrangements by telephoning Ericson 1085.

H. J. Gutiérrez/ 1908. Lorenzo Elizaga and Manuel Cuesta Gallardo en bote de MCG. El Tiempo Ilustrado, 26 April 1908.

H. J. Gutiérrez. 1908. Lorenzo Elizaga and Manuel Cuesta Gallardo in the latter’s boat. El Tiempo Ilustrado, 26 April 1908.

The Chapala photographs included this one of Lic Lorenzo Elízaga and Manuel Cuesta Gallardo. According to the original caption, the boat belonged to Cuesta Gallardo. However, curiously, a few months earlier El Tiempo had reported that a new vapor (steamer)—jointly owned by the two men and named Chapala—had just been launched on the lake. Even though the photo does not appear to show a vapor, perhaps the term was used loosely and this is the same boat.

Gutiérrez’s photographs also included several portraits of children in the Limantour, Casasús, Araico and Rivas families, a portrait of Sra. Robles Gil de Collignon, and a number of views: of the town from the lake, and of the pier, the main beach thronged with people and boats, a sunset, the Braniff ‘chalet’ and the Hotel Arzapalo. Unfortunately, the only good quality version I have found of any of these photographs (some of which were republished by El Tiempo Ilustrado in later years) is the one of the boat. If anyone has access to high quality scans of any of the other Chapala photos, please get in touch!

Researcher Arturo Guevara Escobar has published an extended multi-part biography of Gutiérrez (in Spanish). According to Guevara, Heliodoro Juan Gutiérrez Escobar was born in Zacoalco de Torres, Jalisco, on 21 December 1878 and died in Mexico City in 1933.

H. J. Gutierrez. 1908. Playa at Chapala. Credit: Hemeroteca Nacional de México.

H. J. Gutiérrez. 1908. Playa de Chapala. El Tiempo Ilustrado, 23 April 1911. Note: this is a cropped version of a photo originally published in the 26 April 1908 edition. Credit: Hemeroteca Nacional de México.

Gutiérrez learned photography while living in San Francisco for six years from 1896 to 1902. He returned to Mexico in 1902 and opened his first photographic studio in Mexico City (the first of many he established during his lifetime) in 1906, the year he married María Luisa Vélez López from his home village of Zacoalco.

Before long, Gutiérrez employed an uncle, Aurelio Escobar Castellanos, as his assistant. As the photographic business expanded, Gutiérrez took on several other family members, male and female, to help. His wife assisted with administration and was the firm’s legal representative. Both their sons—Benito (born c 1913) and Luis (born c 1916)—also became photographers. The family resided in Mexico City, but by the time of Luis’ marriage in Mexico City in 1948, his mother had returned to live in Zacoalco.

Gutiérrez succeeded in keeping his photographic studios active during the revolutionary period, became president of the Asociación Mexicana de Fotógrafos de Prensa (Mexican Press Photographers Association), and helped establish (in 1926) the Mexican Photographers Association. He and his assistants took photographs of many of the most notable events and figures of the time, including Emiliano Zapata, the Battle of Ciudad Juárez (1911), the Ten Tragic Days (1913) and the Cristero War (1926-1929).

Note: Many decades later, Aurelio Escobar Castellanos’s personal collection of two thousand negatives, more than 360 positives, and cameras was donated by his family to the National Photo Library of INAH (Mexico’s National Institute of Anthropology and History).

Lake Chapala Artists & Authors is reader-supported. Purchases made via links on our site may, at no cost to you, earn us an affiliate commission. Learn more.

Sources

  • Judith Amador Tello. 2014. “Preservará el INAH la obra de Aurelio Escobar, fotógrafo de la Revolución.” Proceso, 14 Jan 2014.
  • Arturo Guevara Escobar. 2008. “El Estudio Fotográfico H. J. Gutiérrez, un negocio familiar.” Blog post dated 24 Nov 2008, updated 4 Jan 2009.
  • Arturo Guevara Escobar. 2011. “H. J. Gutiérrez.”
  • El Tiempo Ilustrado: 26 April 1908, 8-11; 16 April 1911; 23 April 1911; 9 June 1912.

Comments, corrections and additional material welcome, whether via comments feature or email.

Novelist Christopher Veiel lived at Lake Chapala in the early 1950s

 1950s  No Responses »
Oct 232025
 

According to American writer Oakley Hall, the novelist Christopher Veiel (born in 1925) was living at Lake Chapala at the same time he was in 1952. It is not known what, if anything, Veiel was working on during his time in Mexico, but his first (and apparently only) novel was published two years later (1954) in the U.K. as Intrigue (London: H. Hamilton) and in the U.S. as Hearts and Heads (Boston, U.S.: Little, Brown and Company).veiel-hearts-and-heads-cover

Veiel was also the translator (from French) of Francois Clement’s book, The Disobedient Son (Boston: Little, Brown, 1956) in which “Juan, an ignorant but proud and ambitious Indian, learns the ways of power in Veracruz and Mexico City, and returns to his village to lead the fight against those attempting to become the village bosses.”

A New York Times reviewer of Hearts and Heads wrote that Veiel “not only looks a little like a British F. Scott Fitzgerald — he has also taken a lease on a Fitzgerald subject, expatriate life in France and Switzerland, to write his first novel.”

The Kirkus Review of the book described it as “A frivolous entertainment” and “saucy and skittish.” The novel “follows the emotional escapades of Edward Wallingford and Constance, his young wife, as their first months of marriage take them to Geneva where Edward does not find with Constance the sexual incentive he has had with other girls… Constance, on the other hand, while appreciative that Edward is “such a rock” finds something softer in Pierre – the brother of the housekeeper of their neighbor Carlos, and now their chauffeur. Constance decides to marry Pierre but postponing the admission to Edward, the three leave for England where Pierre, in a moment of petulant pride, bares the past and turns on Edward – with a poker. Edward almost dies, and both Constance and Pierre are tried but cleared when Edward comes to their defense…”

Christopher Veiel. St Louis Post, 30 July 1955, p4.

Christopher Veiel. St Louis Post, 30 July 1955, p4.

According to Michael Hargraves, by the time Hearts and Heads was published Veiel was living in Connecticut, having settled there after some extensive traveling. Whether or not this is really the case remains unclear.

Christopher Veiel, aka Cristoph Veiel and A. Christopher Veiel (where the name indicated by ‘A’ is unknown), was born in Basle (Basel), Switzerland on 8 November 1925 to Georg Ernst Veiel and his wife, Ilse Biema. After completing studies at Chillon College and a Licence en Droit (an undergraduate qualification in law) at the University of Geneva, he moved to the U.S. in about 1948, where he was employed to teach French, German and Latin at Choate School in Wallingford, Connecticut. He taught at the school from 1948 to 1952. At about the time Veiel left Switzerland, his parents appear to have moved first to Brazil and then Montevideo, Uruguay.

Aside: Choate alumni, according to Wikipedia, include President John F. Kennedy, Adlai Stevenson, playwright Edward Albee, novelist John Dos Passos, investor Brett Icahn, philanthropist Paul Mellon, screenwriter Geoffrey Fletcher, actors Glenn Close, Michael Douglas, Jamie Lee Curtis, Bruce Dern, Paul Giamatti, and Ivanka Trump.

Immediately after leaving Choate School, Veiel returned to Europe, to visit Spain and then Mexico (?) and South America. In the succeeding decade or so, Veiel crossed the Atlantic numerous times, and is also known to have visited the U.S. Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico, and South America.

Christoph Veiel is also credited on the movie database IMDb as the author of one segment (“Geld”) of the German educational film Hütet eure Töchter! [Take Care of Your Daughters!], filmed in 1962 and released in 1964, which had several different segments about the varied fates of girls and young women dealing with sexual curiosity, promiscuity, innocence, seduction, manipulation and exploitation. However, according to a German movie site, the segment authored by Veiel never made it into the final release.

If you know anything more about Christopher Veiel, please get in touch!

Lake Chapala Artists & Authors is reader-supported. Purchases made via links on our site may, at no cost to you, earn us an affiliate commission. Learn more.
Several chapters of Foreign Footprints in Ajijic: Decades of Change in a Mexican Village offer more details about the history of the literary community in Ajijic.

Note: This is an updated version of a post first published on 7 July 2014, and revised in 2018 and 2025.

Sources

  • Michael Hargraves. 1992. Lake Chapala: A Literary Survey (Los Angeles: Michael Hargraves).
  • Robert Lowry. 1955. “Lighter than Life; Hearts and Heads. By Christopher Veiel. New York Times, 24 July 1955, 89.
  • The Kirkus Review: 15 Jun 1955. Hearts and Heads by Christopher Veiel.
  • Christopher Veiel. 1954. Intrigue. London: H. Hamilton. Published in the U.S. as Hearts and Heads. Boston: Little, Brown and Company.
  • Francois Clement (translated by Christophe Veiel). 1956. The Disobedient Son. Boston: Little, Brown and Company

Comments, corrections or additional material welcome, whether via comments feature or email.

Illustrator Victor Reynoso helped raise ecological awareness in the 1950s

 1950s, 1960s, 1970s  No Responses »
Oct 162025
 

Víctor J. Reynoso Tapia was born in Tepic, Nayarit, in 1929 and became an outstanding illustrator and painter. He studied, and later taught, art at the Escuela de Artes Plásticas de la Universidad de Guadalajara.

His works were included in several exhibitions in Guadalajara. As a student he had three drawings included in an end-of-academic-year exhibit at the Escuela de Artes Plásticas in 1951. (Ceramicist David Morris, another artist with close links to Lake Chapala, also exhibited at that show.)

Illustrations by Victor Reynoso for Ramón Rubín's La Canoa Perdida (1955).

Illustrations by Victor Reynoso in Ramón Rubín’s La Canoa Perdida (1951).

That same year, Reynoso produced several black and white drawings to illustrate Ramón Rubín‘s book La Canoa Perdida: novela mestiza. (1951).

Another drawing by Reynoso was chosen a few years later by José Guadalupe Zuno Hernández, a former Jalisco state governor, to illustrate the front cover of his short book La Muerte de un lago: Los cuentos de Chapala, published in 1955. (Curiously, Reynoso’s credit there is as ‘Victor Reinoso.’)

Artwork by Victor Reynoso on cover of J. G. Zuno's La muerte de un lago (1955)

Artwork by Victor Reynoso on cover of J. G. Zuno’s La muerte de un lago (1955).

Both Rubín and Zuno (1891-1980) were staunch defenders of Lake Chapala, and their books helped raise ecological awareness at a time when it was desperately needed: Lake Chapala was lower in the mid-1950s than at any time since records began.

Victor Reynoso contributed start-of-chapter illustrations to at least two other works by Ramón Rubín—La sombra del Techincuagüe (1955) and Cuentos de indios (1958)—as well as the cover art for Rubín’s El seno de la esperanza (1964).

As a teacher at the Escuela de Artes Plásticas, Reynoso participated with Jorge Hurtado and Jorge Seimandi in a three-person show at the Escuela de Artes Plasticas’ gallery in November 1964. The following year works by both men were included in an Exhibit of Contemporary Painters of Jalisco. Also showing in that exhibition was José María de Servín, responsible for important early murals in the Lake Chapala area at the Chapala Yacht Club and Villa Ferrara.

Victor Reynoso’s work also featured in a show in 1975 marking the 50th anniversary of the Universidad de Guadalajara. In the late 1970s, when Jorge Seimandi Ramírez was the director of the Escuela de Artes Plásticas, Reynoso was the president of the society of teachers at the school.

Lake Chapala Artists & Authors is reader-supported. Purchases made via links on our site may, at no cost to you, earn us an affiliate commission. Learn more.
Several chapters of Foreign Footprints in Ajijic: Decades of Change in a Mexican Village offer more details about the history of the artistic community in Ajijic.

Sources

  • El Informador: 18 June 1951; 14 May 1964, 5; 13 Dec 1979, 30.
  • Ramón Rubín. 1955. La sombra del Techincuagüe. Guadalajara: Ediciones Altiplano. Viñetas de Víctor Reynoso.
  • Ramón Rubín. 1958. Cuentos de indios. Ediciones Altiplano. Viñetas de Victor J. Reynoso.
  • Ramón Rubín. 1964. El seno de la esperanza. Mexico City: Editores Mexicanos Unidos. Carátula de Víctor J. Reynoso.

Comments, corrections and additional material are welcome, whether via comments or email.

Ellen Black and her fun and vibrant oil paintings of Lake Chapala

 1960s  2 Responses »
Oct 022025
 

Two fun and vibrant paintings related to Lake Chapala by “Ellen Black” appeared on the New York art market in recent years. The first, titled Chapala and dated 1967, was an oil on canvas measuring 30 x 24 inches, listed by Doyle Auctioneers & Appraisers in August 2021, with a provenance of “Galerie Internationale, New York / Thence by descent to the current owner” and a brief statement about the artist: “Ellen Black (20th Century) was active/lived in California. Ellen Black is known for watercolor painting.”

Ellen Black. 1967. "Chapala." (Auction: Doyle New York)

Ellen Black. 1967. Chapala. (Auctioned 2021 at Doyle New York)

The same auction house (Doyles) offered a second Ellen Black painting, with a similar provenance, in August 2023. It is an undated 40 x 30-inch oil on canvas titled Awaiting Ajijic. This painting was recently (March 2025) in a sale at Hayloft Auctions, New York, and is currently listed in an upcoming auction this month (October 2025) at Broward Auction Gallery LLC.

Ellen Black. Undated. Awaiting Ajijic.

Ellen Black. Undated. Awaiting Ajijic.

Given that Galerie Internationale in New York exhibited many major artists in the 1960s, my curiosity was more than a little aroused.

My initial efforts to identify “Ellen Black” turned up  a noted watercolorist and art educator living in Wyoming, who had earlier links to California. However, when I spoke with her briefly by phone, this Ellen Black explained that she had never been to Lake Chapala and normally signs her works “E. Black.” At this point I published an Art Mystery seeking help from readers!

My failure to identify Ellen Black has bugged me ever since, so I recently began a more extensive search for the artist of these wonderful paintings. More by luck than judgment, I can now offer a likely candidate, even if definitive proof is still lacking.

A 1970 article in the Sun Post News (San Clemente, California) about a forthcoming demonstration of Stain Painting at Laguna Beach Art Gallery by “Mrs Ellen Black,” gives a tantalizing back story about the artist-presenter. According to the article, she had enjoyed “a promising career on the Broadway comedy-musical stage” prior to deciding to devote more time to painting.

After formal studies in art in New York and Connecticut, Black studied at L’Academie Julien in Paris and then traveled through Italy, Spain, Switzerland and Austria, apparently with the intention of producing a book based on her European drawings; it is unclear if it was ever published.

After moving to California in 1961, Black studied at UCLA, San Fernando Valley State College, and Pierce College, Los Angeles.

The article explained that she had won many awards, and prizes, including “two gold Medals, on the East and West Coasts.” Elsewhere, we learn that Black’s awards in 1964 included a first place in watercolor at the 5th annual Woodland Hills Art Festival, and a second place for black-and-white drawing at the Northridge Festival.

In 1968, Black’s work was accepted into the juried Sacramento State Fair Exhibit. She was elected a Life Member of the California National Watercolor Society and was one of 40 painters chosen from the Society’s Laguna Beach Show in 1970 to have works included in its nationwide traveling exhibition. By that time, she was studying drawing with Keith Finch, exhibiting at The May Co. Gallery of Fine Arts in California, working on an M.A., and was a member of the workshop of Sueo Serisawa.

In 1973, her watercolor “The Portrait of William Marburn Black,” included in another traveling exhibit of the California National Watercolor Society, was described by a critic in Ohio as depicting “youthful ponderance and relaxation.”

Since her move to California, Black had also found time to perform on stage (dates and theaters unknown) in “Death of a Salesman,” “Bye Bye Birdie” and “Under Milkwood,” was well as make TV appearances, including in the Dr. Kildare series.

Please get in touch if you can shed any more light on this Ellen Black, especially if you know of when and how her links to Ajijic and Chapala came about.

Note: This is an updated version of a post first published 22 Jan 2022 as an “Art Mystery.”

Lake Chapala Artists & Authors is reader-supported. Purchases made via links on our site may, at no cost to you, earn us an affiliate commission. Learn more.
Several chapters of Foreign Footprints in Ajijic: Decades of Change in a Mexican Village offer more details about the history of the artistic community in Ajijic.

Sources

  • The Van Nuys News (California): 1 March 1964, 43; 29 May 1964, 9.
  • Springfield News-Sun (Ohio): 15 April 1973, 20.
  • Sun Post News (San Clemente, California): 22 April 1970, 12.

Comments, corrections or additional material welcome via the comments feature or email.

The Chapala Profile: Lake Chapala’s first English language newspaper?

 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s onwards  No Responses »
Sep 252025
 

English-language newspapers at Lake Chapala may have a longer history than I thought. At the time I wrote about the Chapala Blade, I was fairly sure that that short-lived tabloid from the early 1960s was likely to be the earliest local periodical ever published at Lake Chapala. But, by an amazing coincidence, I recently stumbled across a one-line reference to an even earlier newspaper, The Chapala Profile.

This was in a 1967 article about a Mr Joseph Forcheaux, then 38 years of age, who was combining a career as a minister with living a full-time carnival life. Forcheaux explained to the journalist interviewing him that, finding himself in Mexico, and wanting his ministry to reach a wider audience, “he founded, edited and published his own newspaper in Mexico…. In 1960 he began the Chapala, Jalisco, Profile, which was the only English language newspaper in the Mexico state of Jalisco.” The Chapala Profile was a weekly paper, “entirely hand set by Mexicans who didn’t speak English,” and that when he decided to leave Mexico and return to the U.S., he “sold the paper to a retired army master sergeant in 1963.”

Headline in The Globe, 5 Aug 1967, 11.

Headline in The Globe, 5 Aug 1967, 11.

Whether or not this is entirely accurate is unclear. I’ve been unable to locate any corroborating evidence, and a quick dive into Forcheaux’s life suggests that he often lived on the edge and may sometimes have stretched the truth.

Joseph George Forcheaux was born in 1929 in the Bronx, New York. After graduating from Haaran High School, he served with the U.S. Army in Japan and Korea (1948-1952). In Japan he helped found the Okinawa Boys Scouts organization, which had 1200 members by 1950. But in 1951 he was one of several men the draft board was reportedly trying to locate.

Only a few months after marrying Betty Jane Baumgardner (1931–2001) in April 1952, Forcheaux was arrested by Salinas police on an AWOL charge. He then began taking classes, under the G.I. Bill, at Pasasdena City College in California, where he majored in juvenile psychology.

Excerpt from 1967 article about Forcheaux

Excerpt from 1967 article about Forcheaux

In 1955 he was arrested and detained for driving a stolen car. In 1956 he started traveling with carnivals. But in 1957, Forcheaux turns up in Canada, where he was released from Toronto’s Don Jail in October with 37 cents and a seven-day notice to leave Canada. He appealed the decision on the grounds that he couldn’t “return to the United States, the land of his birth, having forfeited U.S. citizenship by joining the Canadian Army without U.S. permission.”

From 1958 to 1959, Forcheaux was apparently in Central America, before moving to Mexico in about 1960, where he started The Chapala Profile.

According to the 1967 article about him, Forcheaux returned to the Universal Church of God in Los Angeles every winter, to study theology in a small seminary of 11 brothers. He became a minister and started the House of Mercy, a rehabilitation center there for alcoholics and drug addicts.

Joseph Forcheaux died at age 81 on 10 December 2010. I think he might have had some great stories to share if only I’d heard about him sooner!

A brief history of English-language periodicals related to Lake Chapala

The two longest-running English-language periodicals reporting on events at Lake Chapala are The Guadalajara Reporter and El Ojo del Lago. The first issue of the weekly Guadalajara Reporter (formerly The Colony Reporter) left the presses in December 1963. Over the years a series of fine correspondents ensured good quality Lakeside content. They included Anita Lomax (1915–1987), a Texan who arrived in Ajijic in 1956 and started her column in 1964; Joe Weston; Beverly Hunt, who with her husband, Allyn, purchased the paper in 1975); Joan Frost; Ruth Netherton; Ruth Ross-Merrimer, Tim Hogan; Merry Barrickman; Teresa Kendrick; Jeanne Chaussee; and last—but certainly not least—the incomparable Dale Hoyt Palfrey, whose grandparents had lived at Lake Chapala in the early 1950s, and who moved to Ajijic (with her late husband Wayne) more than fifty years ago.

El Ojo del Lago, a free monthly, started in September 1984. Published by Richard Tingen, at the instigation of Cody and June Nay Summers, Diane Murray was its first editor. Tod Johnson was appointed editor-in-chief in 1988, when the publication organized its first annual El Ojo del Lago Awards Show. In 1992, award-winning writer Rosamaría Casas, recently retired from the Mexican Foreign Service, took over as editor; she was succeeded by Hollywood screenwriter Alejandro Grattan-Domínguez at the end of 1994.

Other relatively short-lived English-language publications over the years have included the Chapala Riviera Guide (1989–1993), edited by Jorge Romo, and the Lake Chapala Review (1999–2014), founded by Helyn Bercovitch, and edited by Darryl Tenenbaum and Judy King.

Lake Chapala Artists & Authors is reader-supported. Purchases made via links on our site may, at no cost to you, earn us an affiliate commission. Learn more.

Sources

  • The Globe (Worthington, Minnesota). 1967. “Joseph Forcheaux,” The Globe, 5 August 1967, 11.
  • Guadalajara Reporter: 25 February 1967, 10; 25 November 1978, 17.
  • Dale Hoyt Palfrey. 1994. “In the beginning were the words.” El Ojo del Lago, September 1994.
  • The Kalamazoo Gazette: 12 Jan 1950, 32.
  • The Miami Herald: 30 Sep 1951, 19; 12 Dec 1964, 6.
  • The Californian: 23 Aug 1952, 2,
  • Tallahassee Democrat: 27 Jan 1955, 2.
  • The Standard (Toronto): 26 Oct 1957, 2.

Comments, corrections and additional material welcome, whether via comments feature or email.

Wishful thinking #7: Chapala Railroad Station or Hacienda El Rosario?

 1920s and earlier, 1930s  2 Responses »
Sep 182025
 

Several posters on social media sites such as Facebook have claimed that this image, which dates from the 1920s, shows Avenida González Gallo in Chapala, with the Chapala Railroad Station in the background. The photograph was taken by Guadalajara-based photographer Juan Aráuz Lomeli and first published in 1926. When Aráuz Lomeli published it as a postcard, he added the number 105 and a caption which read, in part, “Camino de autos a Chapala.”

Juan Aráuz Lomeli postcard #105, ca 1926. Camino de autos a Chapala.

Juan Aráuz Lomeli postcard #105, ca 1926. Camino de autos a Chapala.

Despite some superficial resemblance to the avenue leading to Chapala Railroad Station, the image does not show Chapala. It shows where the road from Guadalajara to Chapala left the city in the 1920s. The building on the right in the distance (then on the outskirts of Guadalajara) was the Hacienda El Rosario.

Comparison of (top) Juan Aráuz Lomeli postcard, ca 1926 of Camino de autos a Chapala with (bottom) present-day Avenida González Gallo, Chapala, looking NE towards Chapala Railroad Station (photographer and date unknown).

And, interestingly, the building in the old postcard still exists. The ex-hacienda, which actually looks nothing like the Chapala Railroad Station, is now used as offices of the Jalisco state Dirección General de Infraestructura Carretera. Its modern address is Prolongación Calle 2 #2357, Colonia Ferrocarril, Guadalajara.

Ex-hacienda El Rosario, July 2020. Photo: Fer Chávez, Google Photos

Ex-hacienda El Rosario, July 2020. Photo: Fer Chávez, Google Photos

It’s easy to jump to conclusions too quickly about the views shown on old photographs and postcards. I’ve made similar errors myself over the years, including in my original (now corrected) 2015 post about an 1893 photograph taken by Abel Briquet (1833-1926).

Captions are usually helpful, but not always. One example related to Chapala is a postcard published by Juan Kaiser in about 1910. Despite having the caption ‘Chapala-Market in Mexico,’ it actually shows the market in distant El Salto.

And then there are several attractive early postcards of Tizapán which have nothing to do with Tizapán el Alto on the south side of Lake Chapala but depict scenes in Tizapán, Mexico City. Should you have any vintage postcards of Tizapán el Alto, please get in touch!

Lake Chapala Artists & Authors is reader-supported. Purchases made via links on our site may, at no cost to you, earn us an affiliate commission. Learn more.
My 2022 book Lake Chapala: A Postcard History uses reproductions of more than 150 vintage postcards to tell the incredible story of how Lake Chapala became an international tourist and retirement center.

Comments, corrections and additional material are welcome, whether via the comments feature or email.

The literary and artistic connections of Avenida Madero #232 in Chapala

 1920s and earlier, 1930s, 1940s, 1950s, 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s onwards  4 Responses »
Sep 112025
 

Arriving in Chapala in 1895, Italian count Guiseppe Antona and his friends dismounted at the ‘Inn of the Nueva Purissima’ (sic) which was “more suited to be called a stable than anything else,” since the rooms had no windows. Antona had arrived at a building (long since demolished) known as Mesón de la Purísima, believed to have been located where Avenida Francisco I Madero #232 is today. By a curious twist of fate, the replacement building, dating from the early 1930s, has once again become a hostelry, though one offering a far superior level of accommodation.

Antona-Image

Sketch of Chapala, perhaps by Antona, published in The Detroit Free Press, 1895.

In about 1904, Meson de la Purisima, valued at $1000 pesos, was described as being about 1400 square meters in area, with a covered passageway, a patio, eight stables and nine terraced areas. It is unclear who owned it at that time. However, by 1930 the property was owned by Juan José Barragán, the widower of María de los Angeles Morfín de Barragán (1867-1926).

Following Juan José Barragán’s death in Chicago in April 1930, the property was one of several inherited by their six children. In April 1932, five of the six—engineers Juan José and Luis, lawyer Daniel, and their two sisters, Luz and Paz—sold Mesón de la Purísima to their brother, Alfonso, for $1000 pesos. Mesón de la Purísima (then Calle del Muelle #25) was listed at that time as a roughly rectangular property extending about 50 meters west from its 22.7 meters of street frontage to the east.

Three years later, Alfonso Barragán sold the property to Carlota Bohnstedt de Monteverde for $8000 pesos. The increase in value is noteworthy, but the new deed in October 1935 made it clear that the original building had been torn down and replaced by a new house with the (then) address of Madero #30.

This scenario raises two especially interesting questions. First, who designed and built the new house? And, secondly, who was Carlota Bohnstedt de Monteverde?

A forgotten work by Luis Barragán?

It seems highly likely that Alfonso would have entrusted the building of his new house to one or both of his engineer brothers. Oldest brother Juan José (1897-1975) had designed and built homes in Guadalajara, and had been closely involved in numerous other major projects, including the construction of the La Capilla-Chapala railroad, completed in 1920. Luis (1902-1988), a couple of years younger than Alfonso, had returned from Europe to dedicate himself to developing his skills as an architect. Recognized today as the most influential Mexican architect of the twentieth century, Luis had a solo exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City in 1976, and is the only Mexican ever to have won the prestigious Pritzker Architecture Prize. The two brothers had worked together briefly in Guadalajara before Luis established his own architectural practice.

Following his father’s death in 1930, Luis had spent 1931-32 transforming the family home (Avenida Madero #411) in Chapala into a modernist residence, ably assisted in the process by his talented colleague Juan Palomar y Arias. The revitalized residence was bought by American poet Witter Bynner in 1940. By 1934, Luis had also drawn up some ideas (never executed) for Villa Niza in Chapala (Avenida Hidalgo 250) for the Newton family, and had completed a significant remodeling for Gustavo Cristo’s lakefront vacation home at Paseo Ramón Corona #10.

But what was Luis doing between 1932 and 1934? This gap in his timeline coincides neatly with when brother Alfonso was replacing Mesón de la Purísima, so it seems highly probable that Luis was involved in that major project, too. If this can ever be proven to be the case, it would add one more building to the list of homes designed, transformed or remodeled by this illustrious Mexican architect.

Charlotte (Carlota) Bohnstedt de Monteverde

The story of Charlotte Bohnstedt de Monteverde (birth name Gertrud Adelheid Eva Gottliebe Charlotte Bohnstedt) is equally intriguing. Born in Berlin, Germany, in 1889 to Gertrud Hientzsch and Max Bohnstedt, Charlotte was only an infant when Max abandoned the family and moved to New York, where he initially worked as a clerk. Shortly after Max was granted US citizenship, he and Gertrud divorced.

In about 1904, Max moved to Mexico and settled in Guadalajara. Known in Mexico as Máximo, he worked for a time as manager of the popular Hotel Cosmopolita, overlooking Plaza San Francisco and the then terminus of the Mexican Central Railway. (The hotel was owned by German businessman Francisco Fredenhagen, who has numerous interesting links to Chapala.)

In 1906, The Mexican Herald announced that Máximo Bohnstedt had been appointed manager of the Lake Chapala Navigation company, following the death of former manager Julio Lewells.

Somehow, Máximo was able to buy the La Alemana cantina, which occupied the ground floor of the Hotel Alemán, which adjoined the Cosmopolita. He immediately advertised for a first class cook willing to invest $300 to $500 to run a restaurant alongside his ‘established’ bar. This legendary cantina, with its outstanding German food, flourished for decades, before finally closing a few years ago.

Hotel Bohnstedt. Photographer and date unknown.

Hotel Bohnstedt and Cantina Alemana. Photographer and date unknown.

In about 1909, Máximo acquired the entire building, and renamed it Hotel Bohnstedt. Between the bar, hotel, and a related sideline in trading Mexican curios and relics, Máximo apparently amassed a small fortune.

Máximo never remarried and, when he died in April 1923, left all his real estate and personal property to Charlotte, his only child. Three months later, 34-year-old Charlotte, accompanied by her mother, left Germany and moved to Guadalajara to administer his assets.

In 1929, Charlotte (known in Mexico as Carlota) married Alfonso Monteverde, a Sonora-born resident of Los Angeles. The couple lived with Gertrud in Guadalajara, and Alfonso administered the La Alemana cantina. Carlota registered her marriage and assets formally in Mexico, and made it abundantly apparent that she and Alfonso had agreed to bienes separados (separate property). The document listing Carlota’s real estate portfolio in Guadalajara is the longest list of its kind I have ever seen.

El Informador, the Guadalajara daily, reported that Carlota and Alfonso spent the summer of 1942 in Chapala, which coincides nicely with when she purchased the Alfonso Barragán house. At that time, Carlota also owned other property in Chapala, including an undeveloped lot on the eastern side of Francisco I. Madero.

Later occupants of Madero 232

It is not yet clear when Carlota Bohnstedt sold the property. But, by 1951, the ‘Salazar’ house (as it was then called) was rented by the musical and artistic Campbell family, who had retired to Chapala. The Campbell family—comprised of four siblings: Hilary, Elsa, Amy and their brother, Alan—lived here for five years while Amy and Alan designed and built a brand new home at Calle Niza #10, near the chapel of Nuestra Señora de Lourdes. In 1957, a year after they moved in, Life magazine’s Leonard McCombe photographed them at their new home for a photo essay documenting the American community at Lake Chapala. In 1976, Hilary Campbell, the last surviving family member, donated—in memory of her sister Elsa who had died a decade earlier—the family Baldwin grand piano to the Lake Chapala Auditorium for its grand opening.

Avenida Madero #232, August 2013. Credit: Google Street View.

Avenida Madero #232, August 2013. Credit: Google Street View.

Though there are currently substantial gaps in the timeline of this building, it was later used for many years as the Chapala branch of the Guadalajara-based investment firm Allen W. Lloyd (which later merged with Actinver). In 2019, following some remodeling, the property became Plaza Chapala Hotel, a beautifully appointed boutique hotel.

From rustic inn of dubious merits in the 1890s to a luxury boutique hotel in the 2020s! Who would have thought it?

Lake Chapala Artists & Authors is reader-supported. Purchases made via links on our site may, at no cost to you, earn us an affiliate commission. Learn more.

The stories of dozens of other historic buildings in Chapala are told in If Walls Could Talk: Chapala’s Historic Buildings and Their Former Occupants (also in Spanish as Si las paredes hablaran: Edificios históricos de Chapala y sus antiguos ocupantes). Lake Chapala: A Postcard History uses reproductions of more than 150 vintage postcards to explain why and how Lake Chapala became such an important international tourist destination.

Acknowledgment

Kudos to Rogelio Ochoa Corona, whose long-running series of short video cápsulas about Chapala deserves the widest possible audience, for bringing the early land ownership details of this property to my attention.

Sources

Comments, corrections and additional material welcome, whether via comments feature or email.

Lola’s postcard: Lake Chapala in the mid-1950s

 1950s  No Responses »
Sep 042025
 

This beautiful postcard of Lake Chapala sold recently on eBay. The card had been mailed to California, most likely in early 1957, as the lake was recovering from its worst-ever drought. I’m familiar with more than 1000 postcard images of Lake Chapala but this photograph was new to me. It turns out, from the message on the back, that it was taken by the sender, someone named Lola, then studying photography at the Instituto Allende in San Miguel de Allende.

Lola Beall Graham. c. 1956. Lake Chapala. Privately published postcard.

Lola Beall Graham. c 1956. Lake Chapala. Photograph (b/w) privately published as a postcard.

Though I initially imagined someone in their twenties or thirties enjoying a year or two away from home in a foreign country, it turns out that I couldn’t have been more wrong.

A little detective work was required to identify Lola. Her message included the intriguing line, “Did you see my picture in Nov. Popular Photography? Page 71?” Fortunately, I was able to locate that issue online and find a photograph credited to Lola Beall Graham, a name which generated more hits than I expected in a popular search engine.

Lola Beall Graham. 1956. Untitled. (Popular Photography, Nov 1956, p71)

Lola Beall Graham. c 1956. Photograph (original in color) published in Popular Photography, Vol 39 #5 (November 1956), p 71. Rolleiflex, Ektachrome, blue flash, 1/250, f/8.

The photograph in Popular Photography was taken at Arch Rock Beach in Santa Cruz, California. The short text accompanying it explained that Lola was determined to catch the two figures (her daughter and son-in-law) framed against the cave entrance, “but used up all her flashbulbs before she caught the leap from the right angle.”

At the time she was studying and traveling in Mexico, Lola Beall Graham was a married woman in her fifties, a retired teacher, widely published poet, and mother of five children. Her traveling companion in Mexico was her son-in-law Jack, who was taking Spanish classes at the Instituto.

Lola’s photograph of Lake Chapala marked an inflection point in her distinguished literary and artistic career, the start of a fascination with photography which led to many prize-winning images and a semi-professional career selling photographs to magazines in the U.S. and overseas.

Lola Amanda Beall Graham was born in Bremen, Georgia on 12 November 1898 and died on 14 Feb 1996 in Santa Cruz, California. She married Jackson John Graham (1893-1968) on 3 August 1917. They settled in Scotts Valley, California, in about 1928, where Jackson ran an extensive ranch. (One of their sons developed part of the acreage into Spring Lake Mobile Home Park in the 1970s.)

She was the author of several children’s stories, song lyrics, and scripts for puppet shows, as well as a wide range of poems, drawing on her Methodist beliefs, with titles such as “When God Intercedes,” “My Magic Sea,” “My Dreamland.” Her poems were included in many anthologies and newspapers, as well as in Psychology, Adult Bible Class monthly, American Author, and poetry journals.

Lola was a long-standing member of the Santa Cruz Chapter of the California Federation of Chaparral Poets, and her photographs illustrated an anthology of Santa Cruz Chaparral Poets, published in 1973.

Her poem “Come Spring” won a Writers Digest national poetry contest in 1963, and “For Every Monkey Child” won two national poetry prizes in 1981. Lola published Recycling Center, a collection of her poems, in 1988.

Lola Beall Graham started taking photography seriously in the early 1950s after joining the Santa Cruz Camera Club. Her work, both black and white prints and color slides, regularly won prizes in multiple categories in local competitions, and she was soon notching up regional prizes too. The San Francisco Examiner published her photo of an owl waking up—“Wise Old Owl”—in 1959, and awarded her a prize for “Corn Factory” (a picture of metates taken in San Miguel de Allende) two years later.

Following the death of her husband in 1968, Lola traveled to Africa for three months. She also undertook extensive photographic trips with her Rolleiflex to Alaska, Canada, the Galapagos Islands and the Far East, gaining a reputation as an excellent wildlife photographer. She gave numerous slide talks on photography and her travels, and held photographic exhibitions at Spring Lakes Clubhouse in Scotts Valley in 1974, and at Aptos Public Library in 1976.

Lola’s Lake Chapala postcard was mailed to Paul F. Covel, a friend in Oakland. Her typewritten message referred to a failed attempt to see him a few months earlier and explained that she “was hoping to get some stuffed birds or little animals for pictures!”

Paul Frederick Covel (1908–1990) was a renowned California naturalist, the first municipal naturalist anywhere in the U.S., and a long-time member and chairperson of the conservation committee of Golden Gate Audubon Society in Berkeley. He worked for the Oakland Museum and at the Lake Merritt Wildlife Refuge, designed the Rotary Nature Center (1953) and authored several books including People Are for the Birds (1978) and Beacons along a Naturalist’s Trail: California Naturalists and Innovators (1988).

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Sources

  • Oakland Tribune: 28 Feb 1932.
  • Salt Lake Tribune: 11 Dec 1927, 53.
  • San Francisco Examiner: 20 Dec 1959, 70; 27 Jan 1961, 52.
  • Santa Cruz Sentinel: 8 Oct 1933, 8; 8 Mar 1935, 6; 18 May 1938, 2; 11 Nov 1938, 2; 23 Sep 1954, 2; 27 Mar 1955, 3; 23 Sep 1956, 2; 7 Oct 1956; 20 Mar 1963, 3; 6 Jun 1971, 14; 24 Jul 1974, 11; 24 Jan 1975, 8; 22 Mar 1978, 14; 11 Jan 1981, 24; 7 Sep 1986, 108; 16 Feb 1996, 8.
  • St Joseph News-Press: 24 May 1936, 24; 23 Aug 1936, 20.

Comments, corrections and additional material welcome, whether via comments feature or email.

Writing in 1962, Irma McCall labeled Ajijic an ‘unspoiled paradise.’

 1960s  No Responses »
Aug 282025
 

Teacher and journalist Irma McCall was a resident of Ajijic during the 1960s, and penned a full-page article about Ajijic for a California newspaper in March 1962 in which she called Ajijic an “unspoiled paradise.” At the time, according to McCall, the village had about 2000 inhabitants, ‘principally fishermen,’ and an estimated 200 Americans.

Irma McCall's 1962 article in Press-Telegram.

Irma McCall’s article in Press-Telegram, 11 March 1962, p82. (Credit: Press-Telegram)

McCall reported that maid service was $4 a week and that Neill James rented out “comfortable Mexican-style homes with a gas stove, refrigerator, and fireplace for $65 a month.” She briefly mentions several philanthropic activities (such as Needle Pushers) and recreational pursuits such as duplicate bridge, painting, hunting (‘partridge, quail, pheasant, dove, deer, and even wild boar’), leather work, woodwork, gardening, hiking, golf and horseback riding. For bull fights, symphonies, opera, ballet and ‘legitimate theater,’ Guadalajara was not far away.

Though she makes no direct reference to them in her article, McCall includes two images with the caption: “Silk worm cocoons are sorted by skilled girls in the Ajijic shop of Neill James. The silk is women into beautiful blouses; sale aids local economy.”

Photographer unknown. Original caption in Press-Telegram was "Silk worm coccons are sorted by skilled girls in the Ajijic shop of Neill James. The silk is women into beautiful blouses; sale aids local economy." (image from the original negatives, which are in the author's custody)

Photographer unknown. Reproduced in McCall’s 1962 article in Press-Telegram. Note: the original negatives of this image are in the custody of the author of this profile.

Irma McCall (née Taylor) was born in New Berlin, Illinois on 30 November 1899. After gaining her B.A. and M.A. at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, Irma arrived in Long Beach in 1923 to teach social studies.

In 1937, Irma and her mother embarked on a round-the-world trip. They had crossed Korea by train and were on a Japanese train for Peking when the Second Sino-Japanese war broke out. They made it to Peking (Beijing) where, “oblivious of danger” they spent seven days visiting all the sights, before Irma fell ill and was treated in the German hospital. When the Japanese ordered the city to surrender or be bombed with poison gas, Irma and her mother sought refuge in the U.S. embassy, with its contingent of 500 Marines. In early August, they were able to leave, and made their way to Kobe, from where they “obtained the last cabin on the Heian Maru bound for Seattle.”

In October 1946, Irma married recently retired U.S. Navy captain Francis Bayard McCall (1901-1965) in California. After leaving the Navy, her husband obtained a masters degree in history and a teaching credential, and taught as a substitute teacher.

After Irma’s retirement from teaching in 1952, she and her husband became regular visitors to Mexico, especially Ajijic. Sadly, tragedy struck in 1965 when her husband died at the age of 63 of cardiac failure while they were visiting friends in Culiacán, Sinaloa. Irma continued to return at least seasonally to Ajijic, where her address in a 1971 directory was listed as Guadalupe Victoria #8.

McCall published another piece dedicated to Ajijic in 1966, about children choosing and buying presents for Día de las Madres (Mother’s Day, 10 May). She explained that “Boys and girls in Ajijic, a fishing village near Guadalajara, earn their presents in a special way — by painting cards which Mississippi-born Miss Neill James sells in her shop. Tourists pay one peso (8 cents) for each card.” Ramón is using golden-orange paint to show the lake at sunset, María is drawing the pink stone church, Arturo is painting a Wise Man’s robe royal blue, and Trina is dabbing golden dots on a butterfly’s turquoise wings.

Her obvious interest in these activities explains why Irma, in 1968, was instrumental in persuading the Studio City Chamber of Commerce to help sponsor a 13-year-old Ajijic artist, Ramón Navarro, to leave Ajijic and live with an aunt in Los Angeles, where he could attend formal art classes. McCall had reported that Navarro, barely a teenager, was “exhibiting his oil paintings and watercolors at an art show in Guadalajara.” The Chamber continued to support Navarro for several years, and its Women’s Division gave him a scholarship in 1973 to complete his education in the U.S.

Irma McCall died in Long Beach, California, on 12 November 1976. Her remains were interred (as were those of her husband) at Fort Rosecrans National Cemetery, San Diego. Her obituary described her as a 50-year resident of Long Beach, who had taught in the Long Beach Unified School District for 25 years, been an active member of the First Congregational Church, and was a Past President of the University Women’s Club.

Irma McCall Taylor (her writing name) wrote Perilous Journeys, published by Scholastic in 1963, and republished as Danger Zone (Perilous Journeys) a few years later. McCall’s name also appears on the inside back cover of the dust jacket of Quilocho and the Dancing Stars, where she simply writes that the  book “should be in every library.” Quilocho is the fictionalized autobiography of Zara Alexeyewa (aka La Rusa), the ‘Russian’ ballet dancer who lived for decades in Ajijic.

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Several chapters of Foreign Footprints in Ajijic: Decades of Change in a Mexican Village explain more about the history of Ajijic, of Zara Alexeyewa, and of Neill James and her many contributions to Ajijic.

Sources

  • Irma McCall. 1962. “Ajijic–Paradise Under the Mexican Sun,” Independent Press-Telegram (Long Beach), 11 March 1962, 82.
  • Valley News: 4 Aug 1968, 50.
  • Frances de Brundage (pen name of Zara Alexeyewa, aka ‘La Rusa’). 1973. Quilocho and the Dancing Stars. Philadelphia: Dorrance & Co.
  • Independent Press-Telegram (Long Beach): 30 Nov 1960, 24; 1 Jul 1965, 32; 16 Sep 1976, 32; 11 Mar 1973, 154-161.

Comments, corrections or additional material welcome, whether via comments feature or email.

Jeannine Cappel exhibited her fiber art in Ajijic in the 1980s

 1980s  No Responses »
Aug 212025
 

Though it seems that she never lived at Lake Chapala, fiber artist Jeanine Cappel, a regular visitor to Guadalajara, was familiar with the lake from at least as early as the mid-1960s, and exhibited in Ajijic in the late 1980s.

Jeannine Cappel (née Lange) was born in Chicago on 29 January 1929, and died in Fort Worth, Texas, on 8 April 2013.

Jeanine Cappel studied furniture design at the Pratt Institute in New York, which is where she met her husband, Texan Howard Edward Cappel (1924-2005), whom she married in 1953.

The couple lived in Fort Worth, Texas, and had two children: daughter Toby and son Peter (who predeceased his mother). The couple visited Guadalajara in January 1966 to celebrate their 13th wedding anniversary. Not long afterwards, Cappel, who was a gourmet and master bridge player, began taking flying lessons.

In Fort Worth, the children were still toddlers when she began to work as a designer and decorator, working initially for the Acme Blind & Screen Co. and then Contemporary Interiors. She and her husband, an architect and World War 2 veteran, worked together in 1964 on the sets for the show “Critic’s Choice,” presented at the Community Theater, with one review praising the “tight apartment set by Howard and Jeannine Cappel that gives the illusion of five rooms.”

The following year, Cappel was awarded a Texas Wesleyan College award for her prints and collages. In 1990, Cappel held an exhibit at the Rock House Gallery in Fort Worth.

The two artworks shown below are each about 14.25 x 12.00 inches in size. “Crochet pieces have been applied and enhanced with pastel acrylic colors with an ever-so-slight hint of sparkle.”

Jeannine Cappel. Textile art.

Jeannine Cappel. Textile art. This Jeanine Cappel fiber art on canvas from the 1980s was/is for sale via her daughter’s online webpage.

Cappel was also an art teacher. In 1968, she was assigned to teach at Meadowbrook Junior High public school in Fort Worth, and was later on the faculty at Nolan High School for many years.

Jeannine Cappel. Textile art.

Jeannine Cappel. Textile art. This Jeanine Cappel fiber art on canvas from the 1980s was/is for sale via her daughter’s online webpage.

At Lake Chapala, Cappel exhibited examples of her fiber art in November 1988 at Galería de Zaida, then located in the Hotel Real de Chapala in La Floresta. The following January, she exhibited 20 pieces of fiber art with the same gallery after it had relocated to Ajijic to the intersection of Constitución and Marcos Castellanos.

Lake Chapala Artists & Authors is reader-supported. Purchases made via links on our site may, at no cost to you, earn us an affiliate commission. Learn more.
Several chapters of Foreign Footprints in Ajijic: Decades of Change in a Mexican Village offer more details about the history of the artistic community in Ajijic.

Acknowledgment

  • My sincere thanks to Toby Coppel for confirming some details of her mother’s life, and for permission to reproduce the images used in this profile.

Sources

  • Fort Worth Star-Telegram: 6 Apr 1958; 9 Nov 1958; 17 May 1964; 20 May 1965; 19 Jan 1966; 25 Aug 1968; 6 Dec 1968; 26 Aug 1990; 23 Feb 2003; 14 Apr 2013.
  • El Ojo del Lago: Dec 1988; January 1989.

Comments, corrections and additional material are welcome, whether via comments or email.

Jack Bailey on Jocotepec, Chapala, Chula Vista and Ajijic in the 1960s

 Other  No Responses »
Aug 142025
 

Nebraska-based photographer and journalist Jack Bailey (1901-1977) made numerous trips to Mexico in the course of his career. An article he wrote in 1964, while visiting friends in Guadalajara, is the only currently known mention of an obscure and (perhaps mercifully) long forgotten publication named the Chapala Blade.

In several articles, Bailey included detailed descriptions of many other aspects of life at Lake Chapala. The titles of the articles are, in themselves, a giveaway of Bailey’s prime focus: they include “American Colony Grows At Lake Chapala: Beautiful Monotony,” “Haven for Retired Americans,” “A Most Delightful Setting – Holiday Paradise Called Chapala,” and “An American Colony Has Sprung Up on the Shores of Lake Chapala.”

Strangely, however, almost all the photographs illustrating these articles are of other parts of Mexico, not Lake Chapala. The prime exception is this image of a modern residence in Chula Vista.

Credit: The Grand Island Independent, 11 Mar 1965, p12.

Credit: The Grand Island Independent, 11 Mar 1965, p12.

Reporter-photographer and businessman Jack Bailey was born in Denver, Colorado, on 27 April 1901, and died, following a heart attack, on 20 February 1977, while attending an Arizona State Photographers’ meeting at the Grand Canyon. He began his newspaper career on the Kansas City Journal and the Omaha Bee News before moving to Grand Island, Nebraska, in 1930 to work for the Grand Island Independent, where he went from reporter and feature writer to wire editor and, from 1950, the paper’s first “roving reporter.”

Alongside his journalistic work, Bailey opened his own photographic studio in Grand Island in 1941, and developed other business interests. Bailey and his wife, Bobbie Wasson, visited Europe in 1960 for six months. In January 1963, Bailey announced plans to spend several months in Mexico, saying that, while they had been south of the border several times before, they wanted to explore more: “This time we will seek out more of the quaint, unusual places which the average tourist misses.”

Their provisional itinerary included Querétaro, Veracruz, Acapulco, Taxco, Pátzcuaro, Morelia, Uruapan, Jocotepec, Ajijic, Chapala, Guadalajara, San Blas and Mazatlán.

Bailey’s first article about the Lake Chapala area, datelined Jocotepec, was published in March 1963, while he was staying at Granja Azul, which he describes as “one of those quaint motels which few Americans find because it is off the beaten track. Only one person speaks English and she is an elderly lady who learned when she was a child and never forgot.” The Granja Azul cost 110 pesos ($8.oo) a day per couple, including three meals!

Bailey revisited the area for extended visits the following two years. Here are a selection of excerpts from his various articles related to the area:

Sailboats seem to float lazily on the smooth blue waters while fishermen in row boats appear almost dormant as they wait for their nets to fill with the white fish for which the lake is famous…. [around Lake Chapala] hundreds of Americans have come to build their homes, remodel Mexican adobe huts and spend the rest of their lives. Faces of Americans are almost as common as those of Mexicans in this condensed section of Mexico.”

In Jocotepec, at the weekly Sunday paseo (serenade), “The boys and girls team up by twos and threes and walk around the plaza in opposite directions eyeing one another as they go. The parents fill the benches on the sidelines and watch their children seek a boy or girl who may later become an in-law.”

Ajijic

Ajijic “is strictly an Indian village with adobe block homes and cobblestone streets…. Years ago it became a gathering place for writers, artists seeking refuge from the outside world. Many of these have since left and now it is regaining its previous charm. There is one writer who remained, however, and she has created a square block wilderness of beauty where she lives, writes and has a tourist shop…. Her name is Neal [Neill] James and she has written a number of books.”

Bailey considered her home, with its “huge murals painted on some of the walls”, and her yard (open to the public), which was a jungle of bananas, papayas and many other unusual trees and shrubs, “well worth driving miles out of your way to see.”

Bailey had a word of caution for anyone thinking of moving to Ajijic:

[Many Americans] must drown their loneliness – which they refuse to admit – with drink…. Once one drives through the village of Ajijic he will understand why. The Americano’s home–a beautiful structure-is surrounded on all sides by the small drab nondescript homes of the natives who live on a few hundred pesos a year. The adobe huts are depressing and no matter in which direction the Americano looks he sees poverty while by comparison he is living in the lap of luxury…. It is depressing to say the least. And the sad part about it is promoters are luring retired Americans to come here and live.”

Chula Vista

In 1963, Bailey reported that modest five-room homes in Chula Vista could be purchased for $4,500 and six-room homes with three bedrooms for $5,000. A year later, he revised these prices upwards to between $8,000 and $20,000, and described Chula Vista, where “the other half lives,” as:

a community of between 40 and 50 families built on the side of a hill overlooking the lake… composed primarily of retired people who have come down here to spend the declining years of their lives. The village is well laid out with hard surfaced streets, a good street lighting system and a deep well which furnishes plenty of good drinking water as well as plenty for their lawns and gardens.”

By 1965, Chula Vista had about “90 homes built on the side of a mountain overlooking Lake Chapala…. The residents are all citizens of the United States, who have moved here to retire. The residents include retired army colonels and generals, business executives. retail store operators and a few federal employees on substantial pensions.”

If one had to take a choice between Ajijic and Chula Vista there is no question about which place we would choose. It would be Chula Vista because there most of the residents are in the same social strata and the poverty of the Indians is missing. We could not see how anyone could live in Ajijic beside the backward fishermen who barely eke out a living. Such a climate would quickly turn us into social workers so we could help them raise their standard of living.”

Chapala

Visiting Chapala in late February, Bailey commented that, “The beach was filled with swimmers; speedboats racing by sent waves rolling shoreward and young lovers rode the crests in small canoes.”

Bailey appreciated the dozens of beautiful lakefront homes in Chapala, “by taking the boat trip which hugs the shoreline,” but was especially enamored of the town’s rose gardens:

Chapala is famous for its roses and it is doubtful if roses anywhere grow more profusely than they do in the parkway along the lake front. The parkway runs for several blocks and is filled with nothing but roses. Many of the flowers are almost as large as plates and it is not uncommon to see from 20 to 25 blooms on a single bush. Almost every variety and color can be found in the Chapala parkway. The city has been cultivating and breeding these roses for years.”

Both photos believed to date from the mid-1960s. Credits: Top: Editorial Fema (Mexico City); Bottom (publisher unknown) postcard in collection of Jorge Varela M.n.

Both photos believed to date from the mid-1960s. Credits: Top: Editorial Fema (Mexico City); Bottom: Ediciones Guadalajara.

On the other hand, he lamented, while sitting on the pier and watching visitors go by, how:

Some of the garbs worn by the female members of the tourist clan not only caused other tourists to gasp in amazement but caused the natives also to turn their heads and choke back a laugh. The crazy outfits aren’t confined to women alone. Many men, with their pot bellies, don outlandish colored shorts, jackets of purple and red and a type of sombrero a Mexican wouldn’t be caught wearing at midnight.”

Lake Chapala Artists & Authors is reader-supported. Purchases made via links on our site may, at no cost to you, earn us an affiliate commission. Learn more.

Sources

  • The Grand Island Independent: 29 Jan 1963, 1; 8 Mar 1963, 3; 9 Mar 1963, 3; 11 Mar 1963, 10; 30 Mar 1964, 16; 21 February 1977, 1.
  • Jack Bailey. 1964. American Colony Grows At Lake Chapala: Beautiful Monotony.” The Grand Island Independent, 23 Mar 1964, 20.
  • Jack Bailey. 1964. “Haven for Retired Americans.” The Grand Island Independent, 1 April 1964, 27.
  • Jack Bailey. 1965. “A Most Delightful Setting – Holiday Paradise Called Chapala.” The Grand Island Independent, 3 April 1965, 9.
  • Jack Bailey. 1965. “An American Colony Has Sprung Up on the Shores of Lake Chapala.” The Grand Island Independent, 5 April 1965, 13.

Comments, corrections and additional material welcome, whether via comments feature or email.

Wishful Thinking #6: Ajijic Travel Posters: photorealism or photoimagination?

 1990s onwards  No Responses »
Aug 072025
 

Some curious travel posters, purporting to be ‘photorealistic’ images of Ajijic, are currently (August 2025) listed on eBay. Each is available in a variety of prices and sizes, ranging from $5 for 4 x 6″ to $49 for 36 x 48″.

Here is the first of the two images currently listed:

eBay, July 2025

Image from an eBay listing, August 2025.

This pretty (but fictional) composition, is accompanied by an equally imaginative description:

Immerse yourself in the vibrant colors and charm of Ajijic, Jalisco, Mexico with this exquisite travel poster. The narrow street is alive with the rich hues of red, orange, and blue buildings, offering a scenic glimpse into a picturesque small-town setting. Lush potted plants line the walkway, while a distant bell tower and majestic mountains paint a stunning backdrop. Vintage-style street lamps add a touch of nostalgia, enhancing the timeless allure of this cultural haven.

The second image is, in my opinion, more bizarre, showing a tropical Venice-like scene at sunset:

eBay, July 2025

Image from an eBay listing, August 2025.

Its description is equally imaginative:

Experience the captivating beauty of Ajijic, Jalisco, through this exquisite sunset poster. The art showcases a stylized, serene waterfront town, with small boats gently nestled against the shimmering water. Towering mountains grace the horizon, enveloped in warm oranges and reds, creating a nostalgic tropical ambiance. Framed by tall palm trees, this vintage-inspired design exudes an exotic charm, reminiscent of classic travel posters. The mood is welcoming and tranquil, promising a peaceful escape into nature’s beauty.

What is the online world coming to? Are some people really so dissatisfied with Lake Chapala’s natural beauty and local architecture that they need to create such ‘innovative’ representations for tourists? Or are these images the consequence of AI gone rogue?

If you want to do the visual arts at Lake Chapala a service, support the many genuine (human) artists and artisans!

Lake Chapala Artists & Authors is reader-supported. Purchases made via links on our site may, at no cost to you, earn us an affiliate commission. Learn more.

My 2022 book Lake Chapala: A Postcard History uses reproductions of more than 150 vintage postcards to tell the incredible story of how Lake Chapala became an international tourist and retirement center.

Comments, corrections or additional material welcome, whether via comments feature or email.

Artist couple Martin and Margaret Dreyer stayed at Hotel Anita in Ajijic in 1962

 1960s  No Responses »
Jul 312025
 

Martin Dreyer (1909-2001) and his wife, Margaret “Maggie” Webb Dreyer (1911-1976), spent several weeks in Ajijic in 1962. The Dreyers, both established artists, had opened a joint gallery in Houston a few years earlier. Martin’s entertaining account of their stay in Ajijic is an interesting read.

Martin Dreyer was born in Louisville, Kentucky, in 1909, graduated from Northwestern University in Chicago, and died in Houston, Texas in 2001. His writing was first published in the 1930s, with short stories appearing in Esquire Magazine and several editions of Best Short Stories of the Year. He moved to Houston in 1940, and joined the staff of the Houston Chronicle in 1944. For about thirty years he combined reporting, feature writing and investigative journalism with travel articles.

In Houston, Martin met and married Margaret Lee Webb, who was born in East St. Louis, Illinois, in 1911. From about 1960 to 1975, they ran Dreyer Galleries, their joint gallery in Houston, where they exhibited the works of many important Texas and Latin American artists, alongside related historical artifacts. The Dreyers were noted for their social activism, and their gallery raised the profile of many female and African American artists. (It also led to interactions with the Ku Klux Klan and a bullet hole in the front door, but that’s another story.)

Margaret studied at art at the University of Texas, Austin; the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; and at Instituto Allende in San Miguel de Allende.

The Dreyers’ son, Thorne Webb Dreyer, has ensured that this parents’ artistic achievements and legacy live on today. For more about Margaret’s life and work, see, for instance,”A tribute to Maggie, my mother” and his mother’s Wikipedia entry. Thorne’s summary of his father’s life and work is online as Martin Dreyer’s biography on AskART.

Martin exhibited in numerous group exhibits, including Houston Artists Exhibitions (1943-1945), Texas General Exhibitions (1943-1945), Dallas Museum of Fine Art (1949), Houston Museum of Fine Arts (1951), and the Contemporary Arts Museum of Houston (in the 1950s). Margaret’s work also featured in numerous group shows, including Houston Artists Annual Exhibitions, Texas General Exhibitions, Texas Watercolor Society showings, and the Contemporary Arts Association (1957) and the Contemporary Arts Museum in Houston. Her work won several major exhibition prizes, and she completed mosaic murals at Madding School, Houston (1966), Face of Cavallini Building, San Antonio (1966) and Face of Crawford Building, Houston (1967). Posthumous solo exhibits of her work were held at the Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston (1977) and at the University of St. Thomas (1979).

Our focus here is on Martin’s account of their stay in Ajijic.

Jacques Van Belle. ca. 1960. Hotel Laguna, Ajijic.

Jacques Van Belle. c. 1957. Hotel Laguna (later Hotel Anita), Ajijic.

Martin Dreyer’s account of their time in the “intrigue-charged Mexican village of Ajijic,” (“A Visit to Bohemia Below the Border”) is based on the recently opened inn where they stayed, an inn “built around a Spanish courtyard bursting with flowers and a flourishing papaya tree.” The inn’s landlady was “a bit dumpy, with a handsome face and black flashing eyes. A refined, matronly type.” A friend later explained that their hostess had previously been “One of the leading madams in Guadalajara.”

Dreyer paints a quick picture of the village, recognizing that initial impressions were not very encouraging:

Ajijic, an ancient Tarascan fishing village on the shores of Lake Chapala, is a colorful hangout for artists, writers and other American expatriates. Some of them drink it up and live it up to the tail end of their income. An occasional suicide marks the end of the road.”
. . .
On first sight of Ajijic you might not want a second sight. The narrow, cobblestoned streets are lined with dreary looking adobe houses. Indians squat around, cattle block your car and packs of mongrels yap and slink away. But if you hang around you’re in for a surprise. There’s a dream quality to this village beneath its green mountain range. And behind the adobe walls are flowerlush patios, colorful art studios and cosy apartments.”

Inevitably, the Dreyers were drawn to frequent the “Galleria” [La Galería], the gallery-bar near the plaza, where they joined the local Bohemian crowd in “an ancient building with floor-to-ceiling windows and modern paintings and sculpture adding eeriness to the candle-lit rooms.” One evening, while they were having a drink there, a flash flood swept down the street (calle Colón) from the mountains:

We sat in the flickering room, with sculptured faces peering at us from the shadows, and brooded over our assorted transgressions. The tequila drinks went a long way to easing the pain.”

Dreyer also tells the story of a “beautiful and shabby girl” living at the “deserted old mill in Ajijic used as a pad by a group of beatnik artists and writers.” She was in tears because she had just had a play accepted by a movie company. But tragedy followed. “Later, we heard, the deal was off. Later she shot herself.”

In addition to La Galería, Dreyer found that “A favorite hangout of the retirees was the home of a woman called Margot. High thick arches and tile floors on different levels, tasty arrangement of fine paintings and pre-Columbian sculpture, a hi-fi system’s swelling of superior music through the rooms.”

And, as Dreyer comments, Ajijic inspired art and creativity:

Painters find colorful subject matter everywhere. My wife went to the beach to sketch. Small boys – dark-eyed and fine-featured – gathered all sides and pushed close and all wanted to be in the picture. And all wanted to go to the States.”

After three weeks in Ajijic, as the Dreyers were packing the car for the long drive home, they gave the landlady a small bottle of perfume as a present. The landlady insisted they return inside the inn where she gifted them some hand embroidery. After Margaret responded with “some bath towels from the States,” the landlady immediately gave her an alpaca evening bag. The gift of one of Margaret’s small recent watercolors was matched by some dangling earrings. Then the ‘señor’ who helped run the inn appeared. It was Martin’s turn. In his immortal concluding words: “I gave him an old Army canteen. He presented me with a hand-carved wooden figure. We got in the car, said ‘Adios, amigos,’ and drove off before they could give us the inn.”

Somewhere in Ajijic is an original watercolor by Margaret Dreyer . . . .

Please get in touch if you know of any Margaret Dreyer or Martin Dreyer paintings related to Lake Chapala.

Aside: The inn the Dreyers stayed at was the Hotel Anita, which occupied a once extensive property (since subdivided into three) west of Ajijic plaza on the east side of Calle Juárez, between Hidalgo and Zaragoza. The hotel first opened in the mid-1950s as the Hotel Laguna, and was renamed Hotel Anita following its purchase in the early 1960s by Anita Chávez de Basulto (‘La Muñeca’). Noteworthy guests at Hotel Anita included prison muralist and artist Alfredo Santos. The Hotel Anita closed in about 1965. It reopened two years later as the Hotel Villa del Lago, which lasted only until about 1970.

Lake Chapala Artists & Authors is reader-supported. Purchases made via links on our site may, at no cost to you, earn us an affiliate commission. Learn more.
The history of Hotel Anita is in chapter 32 of Foreign Footprints in Ajijic: Decades of Change in a Mexican Village. Other chapters in that book explain the genesis and development of the literary and artistic community in Ajijic.

Sources

  • Martin Dreyer. 1962. “A Visit to Bohemia Below the Border.” Houston Chronicle, 8 April 1962, 11, 13.
  • Janette Rodrigues. 2001. “Former travel editor Martin Dreyer dies.” Houston Chronicle, 13 March 2001.

Comments, corrections and additional material are welcome, whether via comments or email.

Mark Coomer and his 1955 painting of a market near Ajijic

 1950s  3 Responses »
Jul 242025
 

Mark Coomer (1914-2004) was a much traveled and highly successful commercial artist whose varied works over a long professional career continue to show up regularly at auction.

He jumped onto my radar because of a news clipping from 1955 attesting to him donating a painting of “a Mexican market scene near Ajijic, Jalisco, on Lake Chapala” to his former high school. The clipping explained that the painting had been completed “the previous summer.” Judging by a very grainy newspaper photograph, his 1955 Ajijic work was somewhat similar, in size and style, to “The Fruit Stand” (undated) which came up at auction in 2013.

Mark Coomer. Undated. "The Fruit Stand."

Mark Coomer. Undated. “The Fruit Stand.” Auctioned by The Sell It Now Store in 2013.

Markets clearly appealed to Coomer as subject matter. Another watercolor, “Market in Jalisco,” perhaps based on the same trip when he visited Ajijic, won top honors at the 1957 Arizona State Fair and was named “Painting of the Year.”

Ad, Cinncinati Enquirer, 4 December, 1955

Ad, Cincinnati Enquirer, 4 December, 1955

Mark Allen Coomer was the son of Dr. and Mrs Ward E. Coomer of Bay City, Michigan. He attended Handy High School, where his art teacher was Miss Irene Tryon.

The Ajijic market painting had been completed at the artist’s studio in Galena, Illinois. It was painted in black and white casein paint, to which oil colors had then been applied. The entire painting had been coated with a “plastic protective glaze” which made the painting washable. Coomer almost invariably prepared his own custom frames; the frame for this painting was “weathered wood” from a 60-year-old barn in Wisconsin.

After high school, Coomer continued his art studies at the American Academy of Art in Chicago, and with Paul Honore, a noted Detroit mural painter. In addition to working in several different locations in the U.S., Coomer also loved to travel overseas.

His first recorded solo show (of watercolors) was at Woodmere Gallery in Philadelphia in 1945. His work was included in the 15th Annual Exhibition of Artists of Chicago at the Art Institute in 1946, and he exhibited regularly in Chicago and other cities.

His early exhibitions, mostly of watercolors, included paintings of Cape Ann and the Atlantic Coast, and of Mexican scenes, painted during the winter of 1946-47, when he visited Taxco. He revisited Taxco and Mexico City in 1950.

In 1951 he was commissioned by the U.S. Air Force to go to Europe and paint pictures of the Air Force in action. By this time, demand was such that he was using some of his original works to make serigraphs (limited edition prints on silk). He also produced many washable prints that were made on Masonite.

The multi-talented Coomer became particularly well known for urban scenes, village scenes and portraits. Besides making his own bespoke frames, he also did some work for the Evansville Courier & Press, illustrated books, fabrics and furniture, and completed several mural assignments.

Coomer spent his later life in Arizona, and died in Prescott, Arizona, in 2004.

Lake Chapala Artists & Authors is reader-supported. Purchases made via links on our site may, at no cost to you, earn us an affiliate commission. Learn more.
Several chapters of Foreign Footprints in Ajijic: Decades of Change in a Mexican Village offer more details about the history of the artistic community in Ajijic.

Sources

  • The Bay City Times (Michigan): 20 November 1955, 3.
  • The Arizona Republic: 15 March 1959, 40.

Comments, corrections and additional material are welcome, whether via comments or email.

Lake Chapala: a magnet for short story writers

 1920s and earlier, 1930s, 1940s, 1950s, 1960s, 1970s  2 Responses »
Jul 172025
 

The rich literary history of Lake Chapala over the past 130 years is exemplified by the extraordinary diversity of short stories that have used the lake as their setting or backdrop. This post considers some of the noteworthy twentieth century examples.

Terry-map-Chapala

This map in Terry’s Mexico handbook for Travellers (1909) helped persuade D. H. Lawrence to visit Chapala.

The earliest short story (English or Spanish) set, or partially set, at Lake Chapala I currently know of is “The Sorceress: How an American Engineer was Sacrificed to the Aztec Gods,” written by U.S.-born civil engineer Edwin Hall Warner (1858-1927) and published in The Argonaut in 1894. The story is set in La Barca, which was on the eastern shore of the lake prior to the massive land reclamation scheme of the early twentieth century which cost Lake Chapala roughly one-third of its historic surface area.

In 1900, The Argonaut also published “The White Rebozo. A Vision of the Night on the Mystic Waters of Lake Chapala,” by Gwendolyn Overton (1874-1978). Something of a literary prodigy, Overton had previously written several other short stories set in Mexico, and wrote several well-received novels.

Author, poet and diplomat José de Olivares wrote “Mexico’s Beautiful Inland Sea,” an apparently fictionalized account of a perilous boat trip on Lake Chapala, published in 1901. The article’s illustrations include an early photograph of the Villa Montecarlo in Chapala.

The talented writer Charles Fleming Embree (1874-1905), author of A Dream of a Throne, the earliest English-language novel set at Lake Chapala (and written while on his honeymoon), was well known in U.S. literary circles for his short stories. Embree’s “The Guiltless Thieves,” published in 1902, includes mentions of Chapala and neighboring locations.

José Rafael Rubio wrote a prize-winning short story set at Lake Chapala in Spanish in 1907 titled “El hombre doble.” An English version of the story was published a few years later in San Francisco-based Town Talk, as “Not Guilty.” It is the well-crafted story of a man accused of murder who claims to his lawyer that he was merely a witness to the crime.

The earliest short story related to Lake Chapala with an ecological dimension is “José la garza morena” (“José the Great Blue Heron”), written by José López Portillo y Rojas (1850-1923), and published in Cosmos (a monthly Mexico City magazine) in 1912. It is a tale about someone finding a heron that has been shot and wounded, and their efforts to save it.

Nature and travel writer Emma-Lindsay Squier (1892-1941) visited Lake Chapala in the 1920s, while spending several months in Guadalajara. She later wrote “The Little Lost Stars of Chapala,” a short story based on a local legend, which was published in Good Housekeeping.

Guadalajara poet Idella Purnell‘s “The Idols Of San Juan Cosala,” a charming story written for a juvenile audience, was first published in 1936 in American Junior Red Cross News. The story was reprinted in El Ojo del Lago in December 2001.

American journalist, poet and author Clifford Gessler (1893-1979) included a chapter about Chapala in Pattern of Mexico, published in 1941. This chapter was repackaged as a short story titled “The Haunted Lake,” in Mexican Life the following year.

Harvard-educated William Standish Stone (1905-1970) wrote many short stories and several books. The protagonist in “La Soñadora” (The Dreamer), his 1947 short story about the impacts of an epidemic in Ajijic, is inexorably drawn deep into the villagers’ world of intrigue, sorcery, and witchcraft.

In the early 1950s, established novelist Glendon Swarthout (1918-1992) spent six months in Ajijic with his wife, Kathryn, and their 5-year-old son, Miles. Swarthout. A few years later, Swarthout published “Ixion,” a short story set at Lake Chapala. Miles Swarthout became a successful screenwriter and turned “Ixion” into an unpublished screenplay titled Convictions of the Heart.

Novelist Elaine Gottlieb (1916-2004) lived for several months in Ajijic in the second half of 1946, soon after her first novel, Darkling, was accepted for publication. Based on her time in Ajijic, Gottlieb wrote a short story titled “Passage Through Stars,” published in 1959.

Writer, poet and movie producer Hans Oppenheimer was living in Ajijic in 1964 when he his short story, “The Value of the Ear,” was published by the prestigious Southwest Review. While the storyline is unrelated to the lake, several other Lake Chapala-based authors had work published in Southwest Review over the years, including Paul Alexander Bartlett, Willard “Butch” Marsh, and Witter Bynner, whose poem “Beach at Chapala” was published by the magazine in 1947.

Artist and writer Allyn Hunt (1931-2002), who had taken a creative writing class at the University of Southern California given by Willard Marsh, settled in the Lake Chapala area in the 1960s. Hunt and his wife later bought the Guadalajara Reporter, which Hunt edited and published for more than 20 years. Several of his tightly written short stories were published in the Transatlantic Review, including “A Mole’s Coat,” about doing acid ‘jaunts’ at Lake Chapala.

If you know of, or come across, other early short stories about the lake, please get in touch!

Note: Lovers of short prose might also enjoy the short novel set at Lake Chapala written by Frank Herbert (1920-1986), author of Dune, who had accompanied his friend Jack Vance to Chapala in 1953. Herbert’s 18,000-word novella, exploring interactions between Mexicans and Americans, was unpublished during his lifetime, but was released by his estate as an ebook titled A Thorn in the Bush in 2014.

Lake Chapala Artists & Authors is reader-supported. Purchases made via links on our site may, at no cost to you, earn us an affiliate commission. Learn more.

Sources

  • Charles Embree. 1902. “The Guiltless Thieves.” National Advocate, 12 July 1902.
  • Clifford F. Gesler. 1942. “The Haunted Lake.” Mexican Life, June 1932, 13-1.
  • Elaine Gottlieb. 1959. “Passage Through Stars.” Noonday #2, 80-93.
  • Allyn Hunt. 1969. “A Mole’s Coat.” The Transatlantic Review, Summer 1969.
  • José López Portillo y Rojas. 1912. “José la garza morena.” Cosmos (Mexico City), June 1912.
  • José de Olivares. 1901. “Mexico’s Beautiful Inland Sea.” The Sunday Oregonian (Portland), 2 June 1901, 32.
  • Hans Oppenheimer. 1964. “The Value of the Ear,” Southwest Review, Vol. 49, No. 2 (Spring 1964), 174-178.
  • Gwendolen Overton. 1900. “The White Rebozo.” The Argonaut (San Francisco), 23 July 1900, 4.
  • Idella Purnell. 1936. “The Idols Of San Juan Cosala.” American Junior Red Cross News, December 1936.
  • José Rafael Rubio. 1911. “Not guilty.” Town Talk (the Pacific Weekly), 16 December 1911.
  • Emma-Lindsay Squier. 1928. “The Little Lost Stars of Chapala.” Good Housekeeping, Vol 87 #2 (August 1928), 98-101, 206, 209-212.
  • William S. Stone. “La Soñadora,” Mexican Life, March 1947, 13-14, 74-84.
  • Glendon Swarthout. 1958. “Ixion.” New World Writing #13. Mentor.
  • Edwin Hall Warner. 1894. “The Sorceress : How an American Engineer was Sacrificed to the Aztec Gods.” The Argonaut (San Francisco), Vol. XXXV. No. 2 (July, 1894), 4.

Comments, corrections and additional material welcome, whether via comments feature or email.

Irish-born artist Stuart Phillips exhibited in Ajijic in 1971

 1960s, 1970s  No Responses »
Jul 102025
 

Stuart Phillips (1901-1981) had work included in a group show in Ajijic in 1971, some years after he retired from an executive position in Chicago. Details of his art education and training are currently unknown.

Stuart Phillips. 1967. Summer.

Stuart Phillips. 1967. Summer. (Location unknown) Reproduced by kind permission of Shanna W. Sellers.

Stuart Grosvenor Stapleton Phillips was born 6 November 1901 in Londonderry, Northern Ireland to an English father and Scottish mother. His elder brother, George Henry Robert Trone Phillips, had been born in Scotland. According to an obituary Stuart entered the British Civil Service and later emigrated to Canada where he gained an LLB from the University of Manitoba and was admitted to the bar.

He then worked in Chicago, Illinois, where he became engaged to Christine Barbara Young (1903-1987) in December 1929. They married in Chicago on 8 March 1930 and had four children: Stuart Y. Phillips (born 1932); Christine Lillian Phillips, later Portoghese (1937–2004); Douglas G. Phillips (born 1940); and Constance Ada Phillips, later Kappel (born 1942). Phillips applied to become a naturalized citizen of the U.S. in 1942, and his petition was granted in October 1943.

Stuart Phillips worked most of his career with the Dole Valve Company of Chicago. In 1935, when he was Dole’s advertising manager, he was elected president of the Illinois Engineering Advertisers’ association. He ended his career at Dole as company vice-president.

Invitation card for Fiesta de Arte, 15 May 1971.

From about 1938 onward, Philips was an active member of the Austin, Oak Park and River Forest Art league. He helped organize studio galleries for the league in 1938, and showed works in the league’s summer series of shows in 1942, and in the league’s show of water colors and drawings in 1945. In the league’s Spring Show in 1952, Phillips’ painting “Low Tide” received an honorable mention. Later that year, he and his wife visited Europe, returning to the U.S. in early August.

Though he usually went by “Stuart G. Phillips,” it seems likely that he is the same “Stuart Phillips” who had paintings in the 1957 and 1958 Chicago Artists Exhibitions, non-juried exhibitions open to all artists living in the region, and sponsored by the Art Institute of Chicago in cooperation with the then Mayor of the city, Richard J. Daley. Phillips had two works in the 1957 exhibition: “Receding Planes” and “Outer Drive,” and one titled “No 179″ in the 1958 show. Also exhibiting in both shows was Emil Armin (1883-1971), whose 1957 submission was a painting of Chapala.

Phillips retired from his business career in 1960. Shortly afterwards he and his wife moved to Lake Chapala, where they lived in the subdivision of Chula Vista, at Avenida del Parque #136.

The only record of Phillips displaying his work at Lake Chapala was in the large group show called Fiesta de Arte, held at the residence of Mr and Mrs E. D. Windham (Calle 16 de Septiembre #33, Ajijic) on 15 May 1971.

Phillips died at home on 5 February 1981. His wife later returned to Illinois, where she died at La Grange Park on 27 June 1987.

Acknowledgment

  • My sincere thanks to Shanna W. Sellers for sharing images of the painting used to illustrate this profile.
Lake Chapala Artists & Authors is reader-supported. Purchases made via links on our site may, at no cost to you, earn us an affiliate commission. Learn more.
The history of the artistic community in Ajijic is explored in several chapters of Foreign Footprints in Ajijic: Decades of Change in a Mexican Village.

Sources

  • Chicago Tribune: 30 Mar 1930, 105; 9 Sep 1935; 13 Feb 1938, 32; 9 Aug 1942, 31; 13 Apr 1952, 250; 23 18 Feb 1981.

Comments, corrections and additional material are welcome, whether via the comments feature or email.

The mystery of the Chapala Blade: Ajijic’s first tabloid?

 1960s  1 Response »
Jul 032025
 

The Chapala Blade, a short-lived 1960s’ tabloid, is almost certainly the earliest local periodical to be published at Lake Chapala. It began only a month or two after the first issue of the Guadalajara-based Colony Reporter. Unfortunately, almost no evidence remains of the Chapala Blade.

Credit: The Grand Island Independent, 2 Jan 1962, p11.

Credit: The Grand Island Independent, 2 Jan 1962, p11.

No copies of Chapala Blade are known to have survived. We don’t know who wrote or published it, or how many issues ever circulated. The limited, skeletal, information we have about the Chapala Blade comes from an article by a veteran U.S. journalist in a 1964 Nebraska newspaper.

Photographer and writer Jack Bailey (1901-1977) was visiting Guadalajara. Most of his article is about the beautiful rented home in the city, where friends (Mr and Mrs Paul Pappinfoss of St. Cloud, Minnesota) lived, and where they watched a Sunday bull fight on the television. He also describes a nearby “new housing project being financed by the Rockefeller interests. It covers an area of about 10 square blocks in which modest priced homes in the $7,000 bracket are being built for Mexicans and Americans who are looking for an inexpensive way of life.”

According to Bailey, the typical two-bedroom home in this development included a small backyard and a maid’s quarters of two rooms with a private bathroom. He was especially struck by the view down the street, which looked like “an artist’s palette after it had been used for months,” with homes “painted every color imaginable from bright red to royal purple, with blues, greens and yellows mixed in between.”

Bailey was on a day trip to Lake Chapala when he encountered the Chapala Blade, an experience which left an indelible impression on him:

While having lunch at Lake Chapala, a member of the fourth estate, if he could be called that, gave the newspaper business a black eye. He moved from table to table selling the Chapala Blade, a four page tabloid which told about the social happenings at Ajijic and Chula Vista.
After a diner purchased a paper he tried to sell them a yearly subscription to the sheet, a paper most people would have little use for. He stopped at our table and when we turned him down for the yearly subscription he put on his begging act, something you would not expect from an able-bodied 35-year-old American.
“I’m not like the other Americans who have retired down here,” he said. “This is my only of making a living. I have to sell subscriptions to the paper or I cannot live.”
We were so disgusted we could hardly show him any courtesy. He had come closer to begging than the poorest of the Indians who might have a reason. It certainly did not add respect for newspapermen.”

This is the only known reference to the Chapala Blade. If any copies ever come to light, they would surely offer some interesting insights into the rapidly expanding 1960s’ English-speaking community at Lakeside.

The best source for what Ajijic was like at that time, in terms of everyday living and events, is “Lotus Land,” a 21-page, mimeographed booklet about Ajijic penned by Ralph Jocelyn McGinnis (1894-1966), a U.S. sports writer, publicist and painter who was then living in the village.

Note: The first issue of the Colony Reporter (now The Guadalajara Reporter) left the presses in December 1963. The first issue of El Ojo del Lago came two decades later in 1984, the same year that a short-lived Ajijic-based publication named Welcome (produced by Andrés Ivon) also first appeared. Some years later, at the very end of the 1980s, the late Jorge Romo Rebeil published the Chapala Riviera Guide (which ran from 1989 to 1992) and La Ribera, its sister Spanish-language periodical.

Lake Chapala Artists & Authors is reader-supported. Purchases made via links on our site may, at no cost to you, earn us an affiliate commission. Learn more.

Source

  • Jack Bailey. 1964. “View Low-Cost Housing Project. Prudent Matadors Leery of El Toro.” The Grand Island Daily Independent, (Nebraska): 31 March 1964, 10.

Comments, corrections and additional material welcome, whether via comments feature or email.

Canadian artists and authors associated with Lake Chapala

 Other  2 Responses »
Jun 292025
 

For Canadians, who celebrate 1 July as Canada Day, here is a list of Canadian artists and authors who have historical connections to Lake Chapala and who have been profiled on this site. Enjoy!

Visual artists

Henry Sandham (1842-1910), a well-known Canadian illustrator of the time, illustrated Charles Embree‘s historical novel, A Dream of a Throne, the Story of a Mexican Revolt (1900), the earliest English-language novel set at Lake Chapala. Embree, who published several novels and numerous short stories, was a genuine Mexicophile if ever there was one, but died in his early thirties.

Way back in the 1940s, painter Hari Kidd (1899-1964), who had served in the Royal Canadian Air Force, lived in Chapala. This is when he first met and fell in love with fellow artist Edythe Wallach, his future wife, who was then living in Ajijic.

Love was in the air at Lake Chapala in the 1940s. In Ajijic in 1949, Canadian writer Harold Masson (1915-2011) met and married English nurse Helen Rigall, who was in Ajijic visiting her uncle, Herbert Johnson, and his wife, Georgette.

American artist Gerry Pierce (1900-1969), who painted several watercolors in Ajijic in the mid-1940s, began his art career in Nova Scotia, Canada, in the late 1920s.

Canadian artist Clarence Ainslie Loomis painted Ajijic in the early 1990s. I would love to learn more about this elusive character whose paintings are very distinctive.

Loomis was following in the footsteps, so to speak, of Canadian artist Eunice Hunt and her husband Paul Huf who spent many years working in Ajijic in the 1960s and 1970s. The couple married in Ajijic and their two sons were both born in Mexico. The family subsequently moved to Paul’s native Germany to continue their artistic careers.

In the 1950s, a young Canadian woman, Dorothy Whelan, became the partner of artist and photographer Ernest Alexander (1921-1974) who ran the  Scorpion Club in Ajijic. “Alex” led an extraordinary life but, sadly, things spiraled out of control after the couple left Ajijic and moved to San Francisco.

Swedish-American visual artist Carlo Wahlbeck (born in 1933) studied at the Winnipeg School of Art in Canada and lived in Chapala for two or three years in the mid-1970s.

Multi-talented Mexican guitarist and artist Gustavo Sendis (1941-1989) lived many years in Ajijic and had an exhibition on Vancouver Island at Malaspina College (now Vancouver Island University) in Nanaimo, B.C., in July 1980. If anyone knows any details of this exhibit, then please get in touch!

Toronto muralist and painter John Russell Richmond (1926-2013) lived and painted in Ajijic for several years in the 1990s. In Ajijic, he became known (and signed his work) as Juan Compo.

Margaret Van Gurp (1926-2020), a well known artist from eastern Canada, sketched and painted in Jocotepec in 1983, while living with her daughter Susan, then working at the Lakeside School for the Deaf. One of the founders of that school was Jackie Hartley, a retired Canadian teacher who had taught in Canada, and who took some excellent photographs of Jocotepec in the 1980s.

Hungarian-Canadian artist Michael Fischer (?-2018), based outside Toronto, taught illustration and composition at George Brown College, and painted at Lake Chapala several times, staying in San Juan Cosalá.

The body of work completed by Duncan de Kergommeaux during his visit of several weeks to San Juan Cosalá in 2006 was included in his solo show in Ottawa the following year.

Highly regarded painter, collage artist and violinist Leonard Brooks (1911-2011) and his wife, Reva, an award-winning photographer, made their home in San Miguel de Allende for more than fifty years. Brookes’ interesting collage acrylic on canvas titled “Chapala” was sold at auction in 2020.

Canadian teacher, photographer and social activist Jean (‘Jackie’) Hartley lived in Jocotepec for several years at the start of the 1980s. She and a friend, Roma Jones, co-founded the Lakeside School for the Deaf, now the School for Special Children, located in that lakeside town.

Poets, authors, writers and playwrights

Several Canadian poets have been inspired by Lake Chapala. For example, Earle Birney visited Ajijic in the 1950s and Canadian performance poet Canadian performance poet Leanne Averbach visited the lake many years later. The great Al Purdy first visited Chapala on a quest to explore the haunts of D. H. Lawrence (1885-1930) and later produced a limited edition book based on his trip. [Lawrence wrote his novel “The Plumed Serpent” while staying in Chapala in 1923.] Purdy also wrote a travel piece about Ajijic.

Prominent Canadian folklorist Helen Creighton (1899-1989) was teaching at the American School of Guadalajara when she visited and photographed Lake Chapala at about the same time (1923) as D. H. Lawrence was there.

Canadian historian and non-fiction writer Ross Parmenter (1912-1999) only ever spent a few days at Lake Chapala, in 1946, but has left us detailed descriptions of the local villages and of what life was like at the time. His accounts of the difficulties of traveling from Chapala to Ajijic,  first by car, and then by boat, in the 1940s are interesting reading.

The enigmatic Maxwell Desmond Poyntz, who was born in British Columbia on 4 January 1918 and died in Canada, at the age of 81, on 29 November 1999, is known to have visited Jocotepec while working on a “proposed trilogy”. It is unclear if he ever finished this magnum opus; there is no record of its publication.

Canadian journalist and adventurer Evan Evans-Atkinson (who used the name Evan Atkinson for his early writing) wrote “Candid View of Chapala. An Honest Report on Retiring In Mexico” for the New York-based periodical Travel in 1958.

Former CBC war correspondent and author Captain William (“Bill”) Strange (1902-1983) and his wife Jean Strange, one of Canada’s earliest female architects, lived in Chapala for decades and, in the 1960s, produced several radio documentaries about Mexico.

US-born author and diplomat José de Olivares, who wrote an account of a perilous boat trip on Lake Chapala in 1901, held a US consular position in Hamilton, Ontario, from 1915-1924.

The famous Canadian playwright and novelist George Ryga (1932-1987) had a holiday home in San Antonio Tlayacapan for many years in the 1970s and 1980s and frequently visited and wrote while staying there. His play “Portrait of Angelica” is set in Ajijic. Several literary friends and relatives of Ryga also visited or used his holiday home. They include Ryga’s daughter Tanya (a drama teacher) and her husband Larry Reece, a musician, artist and drama professor; Brian Paisley, and the multi-talented Ken Smedley and his wife, the actress, artist and model, Dorian Smedley-Kohl. Ken and Dorian Smedley were instrumental in mounting the first (and only) Ajijic Fringe Theatre – “El Fringe” – in 1988.

Canada was a safe haven for Scottish Beat novelist Alexander Trocchi (1925-1984), who worked on his controversial novel Cain’s Book (1960) in Ajijic in the late 1950s. The group of friends that helped smuggle Trocchi into Canada to escape prosecution in the U.S. included American novelist Norman Mailer (who first visited Ajijic in the late-1940s).

American Buddhist author Pema Chödrön, known at the time as Deirdre Blomfield-Brown, lived with her then husband, the poet and writer Jim Levy, for about a year in Ajijic from mid-1968 until May 1969. Chödrön moved to Canada in 1984 to establish Gampo Abbey in Nova Scotia, Canada. She became the Abbey’s director in 1986 and still holds that position today.

Canadian visitors to Lake Chapala in the 1970s included artist-author Harry Furniss (1920-2015) and his wife, Enid. His three-volume off-beat memoir, interspersed with line drawings, includes a chapter about visiting long-time friends Leslie and Eleanor Powell in Chapala, who first settled there in 1973. Furniss met various other Canadians living at Lake Chapala, including French-Canadian lawyer Pacifique “Pax” Plante (1907-1976), “the “Elliot Ness” of Montreal, and journalist-screenwriter couple John and Lenore Clare.

Additional profiles of Canadian artists and authors associated with Lake Chapala are added periodically. This post was last updated on 1 July 2025.

Lake Chapala Artists & Authors is reader-supported. Purchases made via links on our site may, at no cost to you, earn us an affiliate commission. Learn more.

Comments and corrections welcome, whether via comments feature or email.

Artist perceptions of Chapala Railroad Station (Centro Cultural González Gallo)

 1950s, 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s onwards  1 Response »
Jun 262025
 

It is not surprising that the iconic and historic Chapala Railroad Station, designed by Guillermo de Alba, and completed in 1920, has appealed to so many photographers and artists over the years, and his grandson Martin Casillas de Alba is the author of several books related to Lake Chapala and his family’s links to local history.

The railroad, built with largely Norwegian capital, was the major project of the Compañía de Fomento de Chapala, S.A. (Chapala Development Company), an enterprise masterminded by Norwegian visionary Christian Schjetnan.

Photo: 'Romero', c. 1925. Postcard published by S. Altamirano.

Photo: ‘Romero.’ c. 1925. Postcard published by S. Altamirano.

Prior to engaging de Alba, Schjetnan had asked Norwegian-American architect Arne Dehli to prepare a drawing showcasing how the station could be the focal point for a massive hotel-residential-marina project. Those plans sadly came to nothing. The railroad operated for only six years, from 1920 to 1926, before closing owing to a lack of profitability and exceptionally heavy rains which raised the lake level and flooded the tracks. (The lake’s highest recorded level during the twentieth century was on 27 August 1926.)

Users of the station in its heyday included, in 1923, English novelist D. H. Lawrence and his wife, Frieda; U.S. poet Witter Bynner and his traveling companion Willard ‘Spud’ Johnson; and visual artists Lowell Houser and his friend Everett Gee Jackson. Jackson later recounted how he and Lowell had taken the train to Chapala on the spur of the moment, and loved what they saw:

“We walked from the railroad depot, which was on the edge of the great silvery lake, down into the village with its red-tile-roofed houses. All the little houses that lined the streets were painted in pale pastel colors, and most of the men we met in the streets were dressed in white and had red sashes around their waists and wide-brimmed hats on their heads. The women all wore shawls, or rebozos, over their heads and shoulders. Soon we came to the central plaza, which had a little blue bandstand in the middle.” (Burros and Paintbrushes, 5)

In the mid-twentieth century, the Chapala station building fell into disuse. It had become a multi-family squat, by the time its then owners—the González Gallo family—gave it to the state in 1992. Restoration began in 1998, and the building formally reopened as the González Gallo Cultural Center in 2006. The building and its extensive grounds now house a small museum of local archaeological and historical pieces, with spaces for exhibitions, presentations, concerts and other events.

Among the various early published photographic postcards of the Railroad Station are several images captured by Chapala-born José Edmundo Sánchez, and by two Guadalajara-based photographers: Juan Aráuz Lomeli and ‘Romero.’ One of Romero’s photographs of the station was colorized and published by the enigmatic ‘S. Altamirano.’

Post-1940 images published as postcards include those by Demetrio Padilla López (Foto Esmeralda) and by Jesús González Miranda, two prolific photographers of Chapala.

Here are four paintings or sketches of the station by visual artists completed in the second half of the twentieth century.

David Morris painted the station in the early 1950s, when he was a student at the University of Guadalajara. Morris’s main love was not painting, but pottery, and he gained a reputation as one of the finest California potters of all time.

David Morris. c 1951. Old Railroad Station, Chapala.

David Morris. c 1951. Old Railroad Station, Chapala.

Renowned watercolorist Gerald Collins Gleeson studied for a year in Mexico at the Mexico City College.

Gerald Collins Gleeson: Chapala Railway Station (1981)

Gerald Collins Gleeson. 1981. Old Railway Station Lake Chapala. Note: Giclées of Gleeson’s painting are available via the website of the California Watercolor Gallery.

Canadian Mark Eager, who grew up in Ajijic, remains modest about his art achievements. The late Jorge Romo Rebeil, publisher of several tourism newspapers, suggested that Mark would be the perfect choice to illustrate Western Mexico: a traveler’s treasury, and he was absolutely right. Mark’s wonderful pen and ink drawings enlivened the text, ensuring the book’s enduring appeal to readers. (Thank you, Mark!)

Mark Eager. 1993. Chapala's former railway station. (Illustration in Western Mexico: a traveler's treasury)

Mark Eager. 1993. Chapala’s former railway station. (Illustration in Western Mexico: a traveler’s treasury)

Retired U.S. Marine and world explorer Charles L Engebretson painted and ran an art gallery in Ajijic for several years in the 1990s. Here is his interpretation of the Railroad Station:

Charles L Engebretson. c 1998. Railway Station, Chapala. (Collection of the late Richard Tingen)

Charles L Engebretson. c 1998. Railway Station, Chapala. (Collection of the late Richard Tingen)

The interior of the González Gallo Cultural Center is well worth visiting. It still boasts many of its original features, floors and details, and has acquired a permanent collection of works by two important artists: Austrian painter Georg Rauch and Mexican sculptor Miguel Miramontes Carmona, long-time residents of Jocotepec and Chapala respectively.

The story of Christian Schetjnan and the iconic Chapala Railroad Station is told in chapter 42 of If Walls Could Talk: Chapala’s Historic Buildings and Their Former Occupants (translated into Spanish as Si las paredes hablaran: Edificios históricos de Chapala y sus antiguos ocupantes.)

Lake Chapala Artists & Authors is reader-supported. Purchases made via links on our site may, at no cost to you, earn us an affiliate commission. Learn more.

My 2022 book Lake Chapala: A Postcard History uses reproductions of more than 150 vintage postcards to tell the incredible story of how Lake Chapala became an international tourist and retirement center.

Acknowledgments

  • The painting by Gerald Collins Gleeson is reproduced by kind permission of the California Watercolor Gallery.

Comments, corrections and additional material are welcome, whether via the comments feature or email.

Chapala Wishful Thinking #5: Lake Chapala, an Alpine fantasy?

 1920s and earlier  1 Response »
Jun 192025
 

Lest it be thought that wishful thinking about Lake Chapala is a recent trend, here is an early published piece about the lake that I think is a prime example of wishful thinking. Taking into account the illustration, it established a high bar for the many later instances of wishful thinking.

Felix Leopold Oswald (1845-1906) was born in Namus, Belgium, and became a physician before turning his attention to natural history. He traveled extensively, all over the globe, and was a prolific writer. He first visited Mexico with the Belgian Expeditionary Corps in 1866. From the 1870s to the 1890s, Oswald was a correspondent for various French and English periodicals. His first full-length work seems to have been Summerland Sketches (1880), based on a series of articles he had written for Lippincott’s Magazine.

Summerland Sketches purports to tell the story of explorations over a period of eight years. In the introduction, the author writes that:

This collection of Summerland Sketches is … a guide-book to one of the few remaining regions of earth that may give us an idea of the tree-land eastward in Eden which the Creator intended for the abode of mankind. In the terrace-lands of Western Colima and Oaxaca, near the head-waters of the Río Lerma and the mountain lakes of Jalisco, and in the lonely highlands of Vera Paz, we may yet see forests that have never been desecrated by an axe, and free fellow-creatures which have not yet learned to flee from man as from a fiend.”

Garold Cole, in his descriptive bibliography of American travelers to Mexico, wrote that “because Oswald was a doctor and naturalist, his observations on the healthfulness of the region and on the flora and fauna should be authoritative.” Unfortunately, Oswald’s descriptions—especially those in the chapter entitled “The Lake-Region of Jalisco”—appear to be a pastiche of half-remembered, or invented experiences. Despite the fanciful nature of Oswald’s accounts, it should be remembered that they were well received at the time they were written by an American public willing to devour almost anything, real or imaginary, about its southern neighbor.

Men in general are unacquainted with the fairest regions of their world. I am almost sure that there are towns of ten thousand inhabitants in the United States, and much larger cities in Western Europe, where it would be impossible to find one man who ever in his life heard even the name of Lake Chapala, while every other village schoolmaster in Europe and North America could write a treatise on Lake Leman or Loch Lomond…. Yet this fair lacus incognitus is ten times as large as all the lakes of Northern Italy taken together, and forty times larger than the entire canton of Geneva,—contains different islands whose surface area exceeds that of the Isle of Wight, and one island with two secondary lakes as big as Loch Lomond and Loch Katrine!”

Fact check:
(1) Lake Chapala is 1100 sq km in area, compared with about 11,300 sq km for ‘forty times… canton of Geneva.’
(2) The area of the Isle of Wight (381 sq km) is about 35% of the area of Lake Chapala, and hundreds of times the total area of all the islands in the lake.
(3) The largest island in the lake is Mezcala Island (0.2 sq km in area). Loch Lomond (71 sq km) is about 350 times larger and Loch Katrine (12.4 sq km) about 61 times larger than Mezcala Island.

Oswald illustration

This illustration (page 84 of Summerland Sketches) would do justice to many an Alpine lake, but bears no resemblance whatsoever to Lake Chapala then or now.

The shores of Lake Chapala had not borrowed their enchantment from the distance of the view. Sturdy hemlocks and bignonia trees crowd the impertinent underbrush out of the way, forming natural avenues along the beach, which slopes so gradually that the water line is almost everywhere accessible. The water is steel blue and wonderfully transparent, in spite of the algae and pond weeds that weave their tangled tendrils wherever the bottom is a little less obdurate. From the racks of an open wagon we could see the mountain forests of the opposite shore glittering with a moist and tremulous light and a thousand hues,—all possible shades, variations, and combinations of green and blue, darkened here and there by the gloom of a mountain gorge or the floating shadow of a cloud. But on the eastern shore the sierra presents a mural front to the lake, and discharges its drainage in the form of dripping springs and cascades, tiny rivulets mostly, except at the northeastern extremity of a triangular bay, where the falls of the Rio Blanco come down with a thunder that can be heard and felt for leagues around. A mile below the falls a few jagged rocks rise from the water, forming the southern outposts of the motley archipelago of cliffs and islands that extends along the eastern shore for at least sixty English miles. A meadow of pond reeds near one of the mid lake islands seemed to be a rendezvous for all possible kinds of waterfowl. Moor hens, surf ducks, flamingos, a long legged bird that looked like a stork, but might be a species of white heron, coots, and black divers, arrived and departed from and in all directions; and a little apart from the rest a flock of gansas, or swamp geese, disported themselves in the open water.”

Fact check:
Poetic as this description may be, it does not match the physiography or drainage characteristics of Lake Chapala. For example, ‘on the eastern shore the sierra presents a mural front to the lake, and discharges its drainage in the form of dripping springs and cascades’? The reality is that the eastern shore of Lake Chapala is (and was in the nineteenth century) a lowland area of floodplain and marsh with no significant hills or mountains.

Oswald’s other works included Physical education; or, The health-laws of nature (1882); Zoological sketches: a contribution to the out-door study of natural history (1883); The secret of the East, or, The origin of the Christian religion, and the significance of its rise and decline (1893); and Adventures in Cuba: How an American boy saved his friend and escaped from a Spanish prison (1898).

This is a lightly edited version of chapter 31 of Lake Chapala Through the Ages: an anthology of travelers’ tales.

Source

Lake Chapala Artists & Authors is reader-supported. Purchases made via links on our site may, at no cost to you, earn us an affiliate commission. Learn more.

My 2022 book Lake Chapala: A Postcard History uses reproductions of more than 150 vintage postcards to tell the incredible story of how Lake Chapala became an international tourist and retirement center.

Comments, corrections or additional material welcome, whether via comments feature or email.

Artists linking Lake Chapala to the 1939-40 San Francisco World’s Fair

 1930s, 1940s  No Responses »
Jun 122025
 

Several artists associated with Lake Chapala attended the 1939-1940 San Francisco World’s Fair, also known as the Golden Gate International Exposition on Treasure Island.

Screenshot from "Art in Acton" (silent movie by Orville Goldner)

Screenshot from San Francisco World’s Fair “Art in Acton” (Orville Goldner movie)

The star Mexican attraction at the Fair was Diego Rivera. As his contribution to “Art in Action,” Rivera designed and executed a mural titled Pan American Unity. This magnificent mural is now housed at the City College of San Francisco. Rivera’s only documented direct link to Lake Chapala is his visit (from Guadalajara) for a day in 1938, accompanied by French surrealist Andre Breton. But Rivera and his wife, Frida Kahlo, may have visited the lake on other occasions. In her personal library, Frida kept a copy of Village in the Sun, the Ajijic-based book by ‘Dane Chandos,’ perhaps a gift from either author Peter Lilley or Ann Medalie.

In addition to Rivera, other artists linking Lake Chapala and the San Francisco World’s Fair include, in alphabetical order:

Painter and actress Irene Bohus (1913-1985) was sharing a house with muralist Diego Rivera on Telegraph Hill in San Francisco in 1940. Rivera planned to include a portrait of Bohus, who was assisting him, in the “Art in Action” mural, but she left him before he had finished, so Rivera painted another of his assistants, Emmy Lou Packard, instead. A decade later, Bohus exhibited a drawing of Lake Chapala in her 1953 solo show in Mexico City.

Architectural photographer Esther Born, best known for photographing modernist homes designed by Frank Lloyd Wright and other famous architects, documented the Golden Gate International Exposition (1939-1940) in photos. A decade earlier, Born had traveled to Mexico to photograph architect-designed modernist homes in Mexico, including Villa Ferrara in Chapala.

Cinematographer Orville Goldner (of King Kong fame) made a series of four short, silent, color movies at the Golden Gate International Exposition. These films include footage of Diego Rivera painting the Pan American Unity mural, and of other artists demonstrating their varied techniques. They also feature the Mexican pavilion at the Fair. The movies, now in the San Francisco Bay Area Television Archive, can be viewed online. Thirty years later, Goldner and his wife lived for a time in Ajijic.

San Francisco World's Fair 1939

John Langley Howard (1902-1999), whose father was the architect behind the campus of the University of California at Berkeley, and many other major projects in California, was one of a group of artists commissioned in 1934 to paint murals in the Coit Tower on Telegraph Hill overlooking San Francisco. Howard later exhibited at Treasure Island. In 1951, Howard and his second wife, sculptor Blanche Phillips Howard, traveled to Mexico, where their year-long stay included time in Ajijic.

Painter and muralist Louis Ernest Lenshaw (1892-1988) had studied art in San Francisco and undertook commissions for the Works Progress Administration in the city in the 1930s, including one in the County Hospital Children’s Ward. At the Golden Gate International Exposition, Lenshaw, who knew Ann Medalie, worked on murals for the Golden Gate International Exposition in 1939-1940. He visited Chapala in the late 1940s or early 1950s while spending several months living and working in Guadalajara.

Noted California abstract artist Robert Pearson McChesney (1913-2008), together with a score of other artists, helped paint several large murals for the Golden Gate International Exposition in 1939-1940. McChesney and his second wife, sculptor Mary Fuller (1922-2022), lived in Ajijic and San Miguel de Allende in Mexico for a year in the early 1950s. Though best known as a sculptor, Mary Fuller McChesney also wrote short stories, poems, art history articles and several detective novels using the pen name “Joe Rayter,” including Stab in the Dark, set in the 1950s’ Guadalajara art scene.

Some biographies of Israeli painter and muralist Ann Sonia Medalie (1896-1991) claim she worked as Diego Rivera’s assistant at the World’s Fair in San Francisco “in 1939.” But Rivera was not in San Francisco until the following year. Medalie had lived in San Francisco for several years, and assisted sculptor Sargent Johnson (1888-1967) and Hilaire Hiler (1898-1966) on murals in the  city’s Maritime Museum, and Miguel Covarrubias on the “Pageant of the Pacific” map murals now displayed in the de Young Museum. Medalie is not included on the list of Rivera’s assistants compiled by art historians at the City College of San Francisco, but likely met Rivera at that time. She became good friends with both Diego and Frida. Medalie painted in Ajijic for six months in 1944, when she exhibited at a group show at the Villa Montecarlo in Chapala, with Sylvia Fein, Jaime López Bermudez, Otto Butterlin, Ernesto Butterlin (“Linares”), and Betty Binkley. Several of Medalie’s Lake Chapala paintings were published in Modern Mexico and shown in Mexico City.

Novelist John J. Mersereau (1898-) grew up in California and studied at the University of California. His mystery novel Murder Loves Company (1940) is set at the 1939-1940 San Francisco World’s Fair, and is an interesting portrait of life in California at the end of the 1930s. Mersereau and his wife ‘retired’ to Ajijic in about 1960 and lived there for more than a decade.

Max Pollak (1886-1970) is best known for his portrait etchings. His etchings of Lake Chapala are believed to date from the mid-1930s, and include “Mexico: Papayas on Lake Chapala” and “Mexico: Weeping Willow on Lake Chapala.” Pollak settled in the San Francisco Bay Area in 1937, and exhibited at the Golden Gate International Exposition in 1939.

Print maker Charles Frederick Surendorf (1906-1979) exhibited at the 1940 Golden Gate International Exposition. His intricate linoleum block prints have been favorably compared in quality to the much-acclaimed work of Thomas Hart Benton, and in 1959 Art Digest called him one of the top twenty-five woodblock artists in the world. Surendorf first visited Lake Chapala in 1963, and revisited the area with his family five years later, when he made the preliminary block print sketches in Ajijic for carving a series of printing blocks back in California.

San Francisco World's Fair 1939

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Several chapters of Foreign Footprints in Ajijic: Decades of Change in a Mexican Village offer more details about the history of the artistic community in Ajijic.

Comments, corrections and additional material are welcome, whether via the comments feature or email.

Pablo J. Villaseñor summarized Lake Chapala for Mexico’s 1853 Universal Dictionary of Geography and History

 1920s and earlier  1 Response »
Jun 052025
 

The talented nineteenth century poet and dramatist Pablo J. Villaseñor is best remembered today for his creative work. But, shortly before he died in 1855, he also wrote an entry about Lake Chapala for a remarkable, collaborative, national, multi-volume publication titled Diccionario universal de historia y de geografía.

Diccionario, Tomo 2
Here, in translation, are a few select excerpts from his 2200-word entry on Lake Chapala to give a sense of Villaseñor’s writing:

* CHAPALA: 13 leagues southeast of Guadalajara lies this delightful lake, surrounded by towns and estates of prodigious fertility. It is truly surprising that it has not been given the importance it deserves and that it is still so little known even by the people of Jalisco. . . . “It can be said that this lake is one of the most beautiful in the Americas, and in Europe there are seas less worthy of the name than the Mar Chapálico.”

After a concise description of the lake’s size, seasonal changes in depth, and main settlements on or close to its shores, Villaseñor laments that:

The unfortunate state of neglect of all our assets, and the lack of public spirit to undertake profitable projects, means that today only small fishing canoes and the occasional private boat or falúa [open decked boat] can be seen on Chapala, together with two that belong to the state government. [Ed. Note: The first steamboat was launched on Lake Chapala a decade later, in 1868.]

The indigenous people who live on the shores are generally farmers; but they also dedicate themselves ardently to fishing, and it is noteworthy that when the lagoon is perhaps at its most turbulent, on stormy nights, two or three fishermen will launch a miserable canoe, which is taking on water everywhere, to catch a few fish, the value of which does not exceed 8 or 10 pesos, if they are lucky. But the men who were born on the shore of the lake, who open their eyes to contemplate it every day, and who fall asleep on its beaches to the confused sound of its turbulent waves, have completely lost their fear. And we know someone who, when the storm raises the waves higher and the Mar Chapálico becomes more furious, throws himself into the water on a small raft, clutching a bottle of mescal, and in the depths of the lake falls asleep under the influence of the spirit, until the waves throw him back onto the shore. One of the magnificent spectacles that the lake presents is when a water bomb, commonly called a culebra [snake], falls on it: the storm thunders horribly over the waves; then the entire cloud detaches itself as a great column of water, and immediately another, gigantic and boiling, rises, with the entire lagoon as its base; the moment the cloud touches the waters of Chapala, it detaches itself, and the lake and the sky become tranquil and beautiful, like two mirrors placed one in front of the other.

One of the things that makes Chapala unique is its sweet, drinkable waters. They irrigate a multitude of orchards along the shore, where the finest fruits and vegetables are produced. They also serve as an immense watering place for the many livestock on the surrounding farms. The water is clear, and no alligators or other offensive animals are ever seen in such a vast lagoon. On the contrary, the delicate white, delicious catfish, and an infinite variety of other fish inhabit its waves. This makes the entire shore a delightful place to swim, especially Chapala, where you can walk on crystalline white sand.

Among the fertile towns along its shore, one of the most beautiful is the one that gives it its name. Chapala is a small but delightful town, at the foot of the beautiful San Francisco Hill, which has the shape of a cone. It is famous for its hot springs, where many sick people recover their health, and for its fertility and temperature, under which the most varied and delicious fruits are grown. Still present on its shore, lapped by the lake’s waves, are the ruins of the old Franciscan convent, which today is a sad patch of rubble with a destroyed church that serves as a parish.”

Villaseñor includes only a brief reference to Jocotepec:

Another town worth mentioning is Jocotepec, for the gigantic image of the Lord of Huaje venerated there. Contemplating its enormous stature, which exceeds four varas [3 meters], one immediately realizes that the unfortunate Indians still mix the ridiculous exaggerations of idolatry with Christian worship. For them, the Lord of Huaje is a greater god, and to demean him would be sacrilegious temerity.”

But he then offers a detailed account of the town of Mescala [Mexcala], and the role its residents played as “brave defenders of the island that bears that name” during the War of Independence.

Villaseñor agrees with several earlier prominent individuals (Samuel L. Trant, Mariano Otero and Manuel de J. Olazagarre) that it is worth studying if navigation could be improved on the River Lerma, Lake Chapala and the River Santiago, in order to better link Mexico City and Querétaro with the states of Jalisco and Michoacán.

He concludes by hoping that his remarks might inspire his readers:

Would that these ill-formed lines could ignite a spark of that enthusiasm that has raised the cultured nations of Europe to such heights!

Following immediately after Villaseñor’s account of Lake Chapala in the Diccionario is a much shorter piece, with overlapping content, written by Manuel Orozco y Berra.

And, Volume 9 of the Diccionario, an appendix published a few years later, includes a third description of Lake Chapala. It was a Spanish language translation of the earliest scientific account of the lake, written by Paris-born naturalist Henri G. Galeotti. First published in French in 1839, a Spanish translation appeared shortly afterwards in El Mosaico Mexicano, a journal edited by Victoriano Roa.

It is highly probable that the republication of Galeotti’s work in the Diccionario was the source of the excerpts used by Antonio de Alba in his important book Chapala (1954), the earliest serious attempt to document Chapala’s local history.

Lake Chapala Artists & Authors is reader-supported. Purchases made via links on our site may, at no cost to you, earn us an affiliate commission. Learn more.
Lake Chapala Through the Ages: an anthology of travelers’ tales includes, with context and commentary, more than 50 original excerpts about Chapala from 1530 to 1910.

Sources

  • Pablo J. Villaseñor. ca. 1853. “Lago de Chapala,” in Lucas Alamán, José María Andrade, et al (comp). 1853-1856. Diccionario universal de historia y de geografía. 10 vol. Mexico: Tipografia de Rafael / Librería de Andrade. The Villaseñor entry for Chapala is Vol 2, p 666-668.
  • H. G. Galeotti. 1839. “Coup d’oeil sur la Laguna de Chapala au Mexique, avec notes géognostiques. géognostiques.” Acad. Roy. Soc. Bruxelles, Bull., 6, pt 1: 14-19.

Comments, corrections and additional material are welcome, whether via comments or email.

27 novels set largely or entirely at Lake Chapala

 1920s and earlier, 1930s, 1940s, 1950s, 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s onwards, Other  1 Response »
Jun 012025
 

Two decades ago, when I began to document the artists and authors associated with Lake Chapala, I knew of only three or four twentieth century novels set at the lake. To my astonishment, many more (some long forgotten) have since emerged.

Ignoring, for simplicity’s sake, any attempt to define the precise limits of what does or does not constitute a Lake Chapala novel, a strong case can be made for the inclusion of the following twenty-seven books (one of them never published), the oldest dating back to the final years of the nineteenth century.

novel covers

Nineteenth and twentieth century novels set largely or entirely at Lake Chapala include, in approximate chronological order:

21st century novels set at Lakeside include:

  • Ruth Ross-Merrimer. 2001. Champagne & Tortillas.
  • William Schrader. 2002. Kiss My Tears Away.
  • T. M. Spooner.2006. Notes from Exile.
  • Dionicio Morales López. 2010. Santos Rico – Animas de Axixic.
  • John Hoopes. 2011. The Spy in Love (Lake Chapala Serenade).
  • Carolena Torres. 2013. Dust on Their Hearts.
  • Carolena Torres. 2017. Castles by the Lake.
  • Jan Dunlap. 2017. Dilemma.

The Three Spanish language novels in 1951

As they say about buses, “You wait a long time for one to come along, and then three arrive at once.” It is exactly the same with Spanish language novels about Lake Chapala. Of the five or six lake-related novels that were published during the 20th century, three of them arrived in the same year: 1951.

Of the three, perhaps the most powerful is El gran Chapa, the first published work of Guadalajara author Juan Pablo Guzmán Alemán. This novel won the inaugural Jalisco prize for literature in 1950 and was published by the state government the following year. Coincidentally, that was when another Guadalajara author, Ramón Rubín, published his wonderful—and deservedly popular—novel, La canoa perdida: Novela mestiza, and when Salomón Zepeda (about whom relatively little is known) published a fun, lowbrow romance novel, La Ondina de Chapala.

Lake Chapala Artists & Authors is reader-supported. Purchases made via links on our site may, at no cost to you, earn us an affiliate commission. Learn more.

Several chapters of Foreign Footprints in Ajijic: Decades of Change in a Mexican Village offer more details about the history of the artistic and literary community in Ajijic.

Comments, corrections or additional material welcome, whether via comments feature or email.

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